Awesome Just Can't Describe
by Donrocs1
Summary: With the world utterly saved by the heroic Dragonborn, Voss, the champion of Tamriel is left to his own devices amid a cluster of boredom, and comedic battles of epic-proportion that don't seem to phase him anymore... Voss soon finds, though, that his discovery in a Dawnstar alleyway will not just yield a cursed, albeit female Alduin, but also, a new adventure.
1. Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1.

Life Going On.

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With the howl of a midnight breeze did the roads of Tamriel whistle under the duress of the elements. Utter quiet, other than nature's musings of air, resounded fairly well among the woodlands and frozen plains.

Something was always off, though, in situations as these in the lands here, an amiss detail that was overlooked until a split-second too-late...

True, there were no more dragons, the mighty beasts that had ravaged Skyrim for months, killed hundreds, and burned many holds. True, an absence of monsters was seen on this stretch of road, and he supposed that was SOMEWHAT of an improvement...

But for Talos' sake, did the Imperials of all things have to set up a damned roadblock?

Voss never complained much, he was an honest, lawful man, not only responsible for saving this patch of ice he called a Province home, but also for royally pissing off the Empire.

Not only that, their little friends in the Dominion weren't too happy with him either...

Seeing possibly thirteen soldiers alone at the front of the barricade made him tense beneath the dark-colored Ebony plate he wore, and he felt his eye twitch.

Holy hell, his nerves were SHOT.

Voss was called many things, by many different people, with different opinions on the world.

The people of Skyrim hailed him- "Hero" "Dragonborn" "Savior".

Though, it was noted, that the Empire had a very polar-opposite say- "Scum" "Traitor" "Heretic".

Now, Voss wasn't a very muscular man, he was skinny, nearly like a twig, the sheer thing was, if you screwed with his buttons, you tended to lose something important, like, oh say... A head, or torso.

Okay, so ONCE, he had settled for cutting an Imperial Noble's arms off, but that was on a good day.

It was unfortunate the guy still bled to death.

Even on the Tuesday it had happened, the Imperial had attacked first, and Voss just shrugged amid his walk to Whiterun at the "Upsetting Accident."

He growled under the duress of the snow whipping about the nighttime air, and pulled the hood over his Ebony helm tighter.

His cloak whipped slightly behind him, and he clenched the handle of his Great Weapon tensely, figuring that, if he didn't just charge out now, than the Imperials would keep him here all cycle...

And frankly, he didn't have time to sit here and watch a group of men shiver their leather-armored asses off, and praise Imperial influence to any sods that passed through the road block with documents.

Nope, Voss may have been a lawful fellow, but gods above was he impatient.

He crept through the array of stones and trees that layered about the sides of the road, and gazed at the soldier he crouched, probably only inches from.

Not a man at the barricade of stockade poles heard the poor slob muffle a grunt, and die as a sword punctured his back.

The Dragonborn almost threw the body into a nearby bush, stowing the three gold pieces in the guard's pocket, before two more men suffered the same fate.

Well, he supposed the bright side of the whole ordeal, was the fact he had twenty gold coins in his pocket, that he didn't have before, and a shiny new necklace, which, in his opinion, would fetch a pretty penny itself.

Perhaps mulling over the intricate designs on the thing would prove helpful later, as, much to his annoyance, he heard the exact thing he wasn't hoping to hear amid stealthy kills.

The soldier cried out upon finding the corpse of his comrade, and Voss let his jaw droop slightly at his own stupidity.

But, to prove a fair point, how in the hell did a dead guy, whom he had propped on a tree, make himself so noticeable?

That, my friend, was easy to answer with the easily seen booted foot that jutted from a thicket like a freaking sore thumb.

The Dragonborn ran a gauntlet down his mask.

Good grief, was the unintelligence of this place like a disease? Had he contracted brain damage?

And he thought the guards in Falkreath were stupid...

The sounds of singing iron brought him from his thoughts, and the ever-present sight of ten Imperials surrounding the bush he hid in.

With clamp of steel, he yanked the Ebony Warhammer from his back straps, and leaped at the men with a somewhat comedic musing. He guessed, even with the mistake, he still looked badass with the armor on in battle...

"Greetings, Imperials!" He cried, slashing a man's gut open with an effective swipe of the Hammer's bladed butt.

"Who'd like to purchase a subscription for Express-Kill?"

Two more soldiers yelped with gashes across their chests, and another lost his head whilst the head of the weapon collided with his forehead.

"Come on, anybody?" Voss asked absentmindedly, hacking down Imperial after Imperial.

"You sir!" He jabbed a plated finger to the last two soldiers, each with a horrified look of curiosity on their faces to the gesture.

"Which one of you would like a half-price offer?"

Before either men could respond, they were cut in two from a single swipe of the wickedly sharp Hammer.

"Pfft..." Voss chuckled, staring about the bodies surrounding him. "-Nobody seems to enjoy my entrepreneurial spirit..."

A quick search of the dead proved more cash, and a disturbing visage of the filth that gathered in your pocket after days of not showering.

Voss stepped cautiously over his kills, and continued his stroll down the road he'd been originally traveling.

Now what, you ask, would cause a random, supposed savior of Skyrim to act like such a... Well, weirdo, amid a fight against foreign invaders?

The answer was simple...

Voss considered himself a good guy...

With a little craziness flowing in his system.

Sure, call him insane, say he's nuts, even attempt to demoralize him or take away his dignity.

"-I'll chop you in half either way!" He said cheerfully to nobody in particular.

The howling winter night around him blurred and hampered with his vision as he trekked the harsh northlands of Skyrim, looking for nothing really... He had a bad habit of kind of just wandering around...

Hell, half of the locations and stuff in general he'd discovered, were found by chance to him.

Another lucky, somewhat strange attribute of his daily life.

Voss let a slight whistle escape his lips as he walked, listening to the clomping of his boots on the cobbled road, the wind and crunching of occasional patches of snow that he stepped in on the rock.

With no dragons around since he had basically saved the world from Alduin, he didn't have to spend half of the time examining shadows which in the end, turned out to be clouds a lot. The whole "Death From the Skies" garbage had destroyed his already paranoid mind, and, beneath his good nature, there was a maniac just WAITING to be released.

By the time he had stumbled upon the town of Danwstar (By, wait for it, ACCIDENT.) he had a significant frown over his face.

The guard that passed him on the road nodded respectively when the Dragonborn passed.

It was about time too, Voss figured.

He never forgot the old days of guards constantly wailing in his face of "Crimes Committed Against Skyrim and her People." The Stormcloak soldiers practically offering to bend over for his services in the rebellion, the Imperials that attacked him on sight daily, or those frigging Thalmor kill teams that ambushed him on the road...

He sometimes wondered how he had survived the insanity of his adventure.

Most of the folks in Dawnstar had retired for the night, sitting inside equally freezing houses and shacks, snoring their heads off, or, in most cases, shivering amid a light sleep under hundreds of animal furs and blankets.

He felt pity as he stepped over to a small tavern by the town's western end, and pushed open the door.

Snow flurried in after him as he took in the unusually warm air, and stepped inside without much thought.

The small group of people inside, drunkards, by the look of it, and a sickly looking Argonian in the back, stared at him intently, and Voss couldn't help his reaction.

"What? Armor scuff?" He gestured to his left shoulderplate.

At that, all eyes went back to their drinks, except the Argonian, which, really didn't surprise him that much by what the quaking claws of the reptile held.

What appeared as a wine bottle, Voss could identify as a heavy load of Skooma.

Jeez, seemed A LOT of people from Blackmarsh were drinking that crap.

He yanked a barstool from the counter at the center of the tavern, and sat in it with a heavy clunk of metal on wood. With curt nod to the bartender, a Redguard woman who looked at him with interest, he asked the following question-

"What's on the menu?"

Now, most guys in the joint would have asked something along the lines of vulgar intent while staring at the sumptuous hips this woman held, but instead, much to her own surprise, it seemed as though the Dragonborn didn't really give a hoot.

And truth be told, he didn't.

No, he wasn't gay, surely not.

Its just that he thought the people of Skyrim were, well... Morons.

The Redguard smiled at him.

"Anything you want." She said smoothly.

"Alright," He replied innocently. "I'll take a Pheasant Steak with your finest potatoes!"

He almost cheered this out.

So? He had always been childish, and its not like the peeps around him had much to say about it.

However, she noted his excitement anyway.

"You sound awfully... Happy, stranger."

"Well, that's what you get when you take a blender and mix two choice ingredients of life, lady."

She tilted her head. "And those are?"

"Wicked Melee-skills, and the ability to glance once at problems, solve them with a magic shout or good fight, and forget the whole ordeal ever happened!" He raised his arms in glee.

She was frankly speechless, and so were the drunkards around her, even the addict Argonian had frozen mid-swig of his love-potion.

"So yeah," Voss laughed. "-The day I give two-shits about the hardships of life is the day Alduin returns!"

The entire tavern visibly tensed at this, but Voss brushed aside their discomfort to clear his throat.

"Uh, food?"

The Redguard looked at him as if the savior of the world was a crazy person, and hurried away from him to get his order.

Voss sat back, and whistled an unknown tune that revolved around something being Blurry and Everyone's So Fake, then he quickly realized he'd no idea where that song had even come from, and stopped himself.

A moment later, and the bartender placed the plate of food in front of him, and went to walk away.

"Hey, miss!" He called after her. "What about me paying?"

"On the house!" She called back, obviously eager for him to leave so she could rethink her drooling over the legendary "Dragonborn" She'd wasted half the year doing.

He shrugged, and took hold of the Pheasant, removed his helm, placed on the counter next to him, and went to take a bite.

Then a wooden clunk sounded next to him.

"Oh for the mother of the lord, now what-?"

Voss cut himself off at the very strange individual sitting next to him.

It was the Skooma addict in the back, the Argonian.

"Um..." With nothing to say to the staring wreck, who quivered in the stool, and claws were shaking something fierce, he glared back to the reptile, and lowered the bite of Pheasant he was holding.

"-Um, hi." He stated blandly.

"Y-You are, Dragonborn? R-Right?" The Argonian asked with a little too-much interest in his voice.

"Yep." Was all Voss replied.

Another moment of just staring, and quivering on the other's side.

"What do you want?" Voss quizzed.

"I dunno." The Argonian sniffled.

Now, there were a lot of ways that Voss normally handled situations like this, and one involved taking a blunt object, and inflicting trauma upon the subject's head.

But, since the little wierdy hadn't really tried to kill him yet, he was still a civilian, and Voss just rubbed his nose quietly, and went back to raising the bird-meat to his mouth.

"Y-You h-have nice weapons, r-right?"

He was interrupted again, and huffed as his hand drew the meat away again.

"Yeah. Now... What. Do. You. Want?"

The Argonian shivered a little more.

"I dunno."

Voss growled, and dug into his food, eating the Pheasant with vigor, before stuffing the potato in his mouth.

"D-Dragonborn?"

Oh. My. Gods.

This guy was annoying.

Voss swallowed a final bit, and spun on his stool jabbing a plated finger in the Argonian's face.

"Look, you intoxicated sorry-excuse for a Iguana-Human love-affair-result..." He growled.

"I don't have time for your stupidity, or for buying that crap you most likely conjured in a damned toilet, now... I'll ask you again, WHAT. DO. YOU. WANT?!"

His demeanor usually revolved around being a comedian, or a heroic warrior, doing SOMETHING that revolved around the word "Awesome-Sauce" but this was ridiculous enough, that Voss was actually annoyed.

The Argonian, wearing little more than rags, sniffled again.

"I dunno."

"GOD DAMN IT!" Voss shrieked, eating the last of his food in what appeared a single bite, he stood from his stool, and started to walk towards the door.

With his cheeks full, his mutters only sounded like muffled, nonsensical utters of the very element of low I.Q he accused half of Skyrim from suffering...

Voss slammed the door to the tavern, and walked back amid the snow.

Dawnstar was about with its usual business as he stalked through the streets with a bored slump in his shoulders.

At least the good part was, that drunk was off his mind...

At least, until he heard a loud, near deafening bang from the nearby alleyway.

"HOLY SHIT!" Voss screamed, jumping higher than he had ever leaped in battle away from the space between the two buildings, and falling into a group of crates with a crash of wood.

Luckily, there was no soul around to see his embarrassment o flustered expression.

He grumbled under his breath, and yanked the Hammer from his back once more, stomping towards the alley.

"Freaking sewer rats! I'll chop your damn tail off for scaring me like that!"

He tossed sacks of trash and wooden barrels aside, one after the other to get a large shadow, about the size of a dog, under the whole mess.

With a final crash of fallen garbage, Voss raised his Hammer above his head to the quivering creature below him.

"Whose laughing now you little-DRAGON?!"

The Hammer clambered about in his grasp as he stumbled backwards, leaning against a wall for support as he stared in shock at the dog-sized Dragon before him.

The reptile looked upwards, examining the Dragonborn as if it had seen him before.

Suddenly, a horrible realization hit Voss at that point.

Great googly-moogly...

"ALDUIN?!"

"DOVAHKIN?!"

They both cried out the other's title simultaneously, Alduin's smaller head raising in surprise, and Voss's body freezing to the spot.

"Y-YOUR DEAD! AND- Wait, you sound different."

Alduin's look of rage diminished to a frenzied expression of panic.

"S-Shut up!" He replied. "I am still the World Eater! Destroyer of-!"

"You sound like a girl, man." Voss tilted his head.

"No! No I don't!" Alduin failed miserably at trying to make his voice sound deeper.

Now seeing him more clearly, Voss noticed the curvature of the supposedly male dragon's body, the sleek torso, and the two... Assets, that adorned the chest.

"Stop staring at me! I'll end you, Dovahkin!"

"Uh... Dude?"

"WHAT?!"

"You got Sweatermuffins..."

Alduin's face plummeted in sudden fear, and his/her gaze fell down to his/her body with a quick snap of motion.

"EEK!" He squeaked quite femininely, covering the two lumps with his wings. The Dragon gazed up at the heavens.

"CURSE YOU DIVINES! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!"

"Hey, calm down..." Voss still clutched his Hammer like a stuffed animal to his chest.

"YOU! This is your fault, human!" Alduin cursed, jabbing a wing corner in his direction, and then yipping once more, and recovering his right asset.

Man, if Voss thought today was awkward by the time he'd left the tavern, that damned Skooma addict, the road block... Those paled in craziness compared to THIS!

Sitting in the alley, silent, the two rivals stared at each other, Voss in shock, and Alduin in hate.

"Uh... Look, Alduin, you were trying to exterminate everybody, I kind of had to stop that."

Alduin grumbled to herself, and fell face-first into the trash surrounding her.

"My life... Is RUINED." She muffled.

Voss felt extremely awkward, and hundreds of questions buzzed in his mind.

If Alduin had returned, than something BIG must be happening, right?

"W-Why are you back?" Voss asked.

Alduin didn't respond, and lay there, for a second, Voss thought she was dead.

"Al'?"

"The Divines have punished me..." Was the Dragon's distorted, and blurred response under the bags of trash she buried her snout in.

"What?" Voss quizzed stupidly.

"THEY PUNISHED ME TO A LIFE OF SLAVERY YOU DOLT!" She barked, head snapping from the mound and staring daggers of rage at the human.

"Slavery? To who?"

Alduin eyed him dumbly.

He actually didn't know, and it was unfortunate for her, that if she lied, and tried to walk away, the Divines would strike her down...

"T-To.." She choked on her speech, and reattempted to say these blasphemous words.

"To you, Dovahkin." She spat them, and bowed her head in submission.

Voss had to process this, and stayed quiet for the longest time.

"So, the Gods have... Forced you... To be..."

"Your follower..." Alduin sneered.

Voss felt a hideous smile creep on his face, eyes glowing to the size of dinner plates, his pupils literally dilated.

"YO!" He cheered, standing bolt upright.

Alduin flinched to gaze up at him.

"I HAVE A PET DRAGON!"

She gawked.

This just couldn't be happening to her...

"Now wait just a minute, Dovahkin! I will-EEK!" She yipped in protest as the Ebony Armored human slung the little Dragon over his shoulder with no effort whatsoever.

He walked out of the alley, past the empty streets, with the speechless World Eater dazed over his arm.

In all of his... Well, HER, thousands of years of existence, this one day would mark the greatest change in her life, than anything she had experienced in so long.

But for the meantime, Alduin rocked with the motions of Voss' walking, and felt delirious amid how EXACTLY the Gods had cursed her.

From that moment on whilst Voss walked with his new buddy into the moonlight of the clearing night, Skyrim, would NEVER, be the same.

-0-0-0-0-0-


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2.

Change is Awkward.

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"-And then, we can play pranks on the kids in Whiterun! Oh! And THEN, we can steal horses from the Imperial Camp by Riften, and... OH! YES! Then, we can eat Honey-Nut-Treats at Winterhold's port!"

Since when was the mighty Dragonborn such a dork?

Alduin leaned her head in torture against Voss' shoulder as he drabbled onwards on their upcoming misadventures about Skyrim, when, in reality, the only thing on her mind was how to painfully kill him, and then return this curse to the Divines.

"-Hey, are you listening, buddy?"

"I... Am not, your... BUDDY!" She screamed, banging her weaker, near useless fists against his back with clangs of scale against metal.

Voss slowed slightly in his walk to... Wherever, and shrugged.

"Nah, believe you-me Alduin, old-wounds heal pretty quick in my book. We are gonna have, SO MUCH FUN!"

"Shut your mouth you maggot!" She snapped. "I'll tear your spine from your neck!"

"No need to be so violent, Al'." He laughed heartily.

At that time, Alduin just gave up, and buried her head into his shoulder with a defeated growl. Maybe once she had been a great lord of the Dragons, intent, and actually capable of destroying the world...

Now, she was nothing more than a frigging pet to her arch nemesis.

Still slung over his shoulder like a towel, she crossed her arms over her breasts, and pouted, becoming angry at how her new parts jutted into her frontal space.

The snow had long since faded since Voss had left Dawnstar, and now, a bright sunlight shimmered above a sea of greenery patched with occasional snow.

Pine trees and bushes lined the grasslands and plains around the road, and Alduin lost herself in the sudden quiet.

"Hey, Alduin?"

"What, you freak?"

"Are you hungry?"

She was about to lash out with curses heaped on his filthy soul, when she heard the rumble in her curved gut.

She growled angrily.

"Yes, Dovahkin..."

"Awesome!" He replied, taking her in his arms again, and setting her down gently on the road in front of him.

Alduin stepped lightly on her new, smaller limbs, not quite adjusted to the body, and gazed at him with a hateful stare as he bent to retrieve food from the small pack he carried on his hip.

Tapping her foot impatiently, she watched as he dug about in the carrying case.

"Hmmm..." He muttered, retracting with a stone in his hand. "Nope." He tossed it over his shoulder, where it vanished into a nearby thicket.

More shuffling was heard, than he came back with a severed Giant's toe. She grimaced in disgust.

"Nope." That also went airborne into the backdrop.

Alduin found herself pouting again, much to her disdain, as he drove his gauntlet back into the sack, and ruffled it about.

Finally, she bore her teeth.

"For Sovngarde's sake, you bafoon!" She snapped.

Voss ignored her, and proceeded to drag a elongated object from the pack, which, after her jaw kind of dropped further as it came out more, was finally revealed to be a Woodcutter's axe.

"Hmmm." Voss pondered how the thing even fit in there, shrugged, and threw it over his shoulder. "Nope."

It imbedded into the bark of a tree with CRACK!

"That's IT!" Alduin cried, stomping forwards, and snatching her weak claw about the Dragonborn's wrist. She flung his hand away, and stuck her snout into the bag, grumbling to herself.

"Well fine, be that way." Voss grumbled, folding his arms amid his kneel, and watching as the Dragon stuffed half of her body into the carrying sack.

"What in hell's name do you keep in here?!" He heard her muffled speech.

"Oh you know," He waved his hand dismissively.

A few seconds later, and Alduin froze.

"Dovahkin..." She uttered.

"DOVAHKIN!"

"What?" He asked innocently.

"THERE IS SOMETHING CRAWLING ON MY NOSE!"

When Alduin retracted, he rubbed a finger under the chin of his helm to her looking at him with a panicked state.

On the Dragon's snout, a tiny, grey-colored, arachnid-like creature clambered about, before rearing back with two, delicate little pincers.

The baby mudcrab dug its appendages into Alduin's nostrils, and she bellowed at the sudden pain.

"GET IT OFF!" She screamed, flinging her head about wildly. "GET IT OFF NOW!"

With the speed and behavior of a startled dog, Alduin rolled and scurried about the road, yelling her head off and pawing effortlessly at the tiny crab.

All the while, it clung to her tightly, and refused to let go.

Voss laughed at his companion's misfortune.

"Oh gods, that's FUNNY!" He heaved.

"YOU ASS!" She cried. "HELP ME!"

Voss wiped a tear from the eye-slot of his helm, and reached over the flopping Dragon.

With a pluck, the Mudcrab juvenile was snatched from her nose, and tossed into the surrounding brush over Voss' shoulder.

"There," He replied sarcastically. "-All better."

Alduin panted from the physical effort, and clutched her snout tenderly. Upon looking down with wild eyes, she saw her nostrils were red and puffy.

She groaned in feminine-worries of self-appearance.

"Oh hey!" Voss smiled as he grabbed hold of a second pouch on his breastplate. "Here's the food!"

Alduin halted her prior actions, and gawked at him with a shocked expression as he took out a slab of beef from the pouch, before reapplying it.

Her jaw had dropped by the time he offered it to her.

"Hey... Hey, Al'?" He jiggled the cooked meat in her unmoving face. "Yoo-hoo?" He nagged.

The Dragon shook herself, blinked, and snatched the food from his grasp, and swallowed it in one bite.

"I. HATE. You." She said emotionlessly.

"Pfft, I'm not THAT bad, buddy..." He stated.

Before she could respond, she felt the breath leave her as Voss lifted her up, and slung her over his shoulder once more. Finally, with steam leaving her hearing apparatus on the sides of her reptilian head, Alduin mustered her loudest vocals.

"I AM NOT YOUR, BUDDY!"

It was too bad that she wasn't even heard a half-mile away.

-0-0-0-0-0-

If the sheer humiliation hadn't been mounted on her enough, then the fact that the sound of the wind, and Voss' walking put her to sleep would further bolster it.

Alduin snored lightly, and drooped over the Dragonborn's shoulder before he shook her awake with jerks of his arm.

"Hey, Al', wake up."

Alduin gasped awake, and rolled her eyes at coming to terms with what had transpired so far WASN'T a dream.

She pressed a claw into his back to turn and look at him.

"What, whoreson?" She snapped groggily.

"We're here!" He said proudly.

She hadn't even noticed the gates of Whiterun until she heard a gasp from another human.

The city stood dominant behind the guard as he couldn't get his mouth to work, and jabbed a quaking finger in Alduin's face. She retracted with wide eyes.

"T-THAT'S-!" He was cut off as Voss answered for him

"Yep. That's my buddy, Alduin."

"I'm not your Buddy..." She growled angrily. The guard released a hideous, pre-teen girl shriek, and flailed his arms amid a run back down the ramp that Voss had trekked to get to the gate.

"Hmm. Rough day for him I suppose..." Voss said, and pushed his gauntlet into the wooden gates of the city.

Nobody noticed as he walked down the street, whistling, with the Eater of Worlds over his shoulder, and waved hello to one of the storekeepers he knew.

The blacksmith waved back with her usual smile, and, upon laying eyes on the curious Dragon, feinted, and fell onto the street with a ruffling of her tunic.

Voss took no notice, and snatched up his keys to his house, the Breezehome, located by the front gate of the city.

Alduin said nothing as he turned the lock, and strolled inside.

It was dark, and she felt herself be put down onto the wooden floor. She growled at the inability to see, and heard him turn on a series of lanterns.

Moments passed of his whistling, her tapping foot, and the sound of his boots clomping to the two chairs in the center of the downstairs level.

Alduin narrowed her red eyes and gazed about at the simple decor, the noble furniture and wooden construction of his home.

"Welcome to my abode, Alduin!" Voss clapped his hands together, and sat in the right chair next to him. He pulled down his hood, and removed his Ebony Helm, revealing a thin set of black hair, his green eyes, and clear face. He smiled at her like a comedian.

For awhile the Dragon didn't respond, and just stood by the door, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Well, make yourself at home!" He stated.

The generosity this man was showing to her, when prior a few weeks they were trying to kill each other, was astounding.

She trotted to a dresser, and tugged it open with her claw, looking about its contents of pots and pans.

He watched her eagerly, and by the time the Dragon had examined nearly everything in the room, she stood dumbly before him.

"Now what... Dovahkin?" She growled.

"I dunno, I'm not ALWAYS out adventuring." He reasoned, snatching up a book by the chair's side he sat in, and flipping it open.

She gradually found herself growing bored as he read, and snorted in annoyance.

Seeing the staircase to the second floor, she growled and stomped towards, and eventually up it. When she neared the top, exhaling from the effort it took her to get there, she gazed about his bedroom. With a flick of her wings, and a quick walk to his dresser, she slid the top drawer open with her snout.

Mounting her claws up on the top, she hoisted herself higher to gaze inside, and saw a quite decadent looking book inside.

Up until now, she had never really saw a purpose in books, seeing as before, they were smaller then her, but now, with one as big as her head in front of her, she snatched it up with a grudging, and agitated sigh.

She flipped it to the first page, and read the title.

"THE LUSTY ARGONIAN MAID. V1."

Her eye twitched.

Gods... She had found something based off a female of the marsh-inhabiting reptile people she so despised, in HIS dresser.

Curious, she read through several pages of the play, and she found the inside content to be... Stirring.

Given a female body as a curse, a most wondrous, yet alien feeling overwhelmed the area between her legs as she continued to read the apparent erotica.

Suddenly, the bulges on her chest, quite large, began to gather the sensation as well, and she couldn't stifle the gasp from her chops when her claws began to knead them.

She shut her eyes, and began to undulate on her position from the floor, reading text as her claws traced about her curved, female body.

It was something that Alduin couldn't really comprehend, and it was also a nagging fact, that the Divines were probably hysterically laughing right now.

But for some reason, Alduin didn't really give a crap.

A few more sentences, and her claw parted a vent-like entrance located at the joining point between her thighs. At that point, the cry that escaped her couldn't be stifled, and she snatched her claws over her snout to quiet herself.

The last thing she needed was to be caught in this kind of act in front of the Dovahkin...

The Dovahkin...

She realized at that point, she'd been stimulating herself with no real mate in mind, and the sudden thoughts of HIM began to sicken her.

Anger and humiliation once again filled her system, and she felt her sensation lower itself.

Then, the most heretical, yet arousing image plastered itself in her mental visage, and burned its very shapes into her mind.

Her male past as the World Eater was banished from her thoughts when the picture of that damn human shoving his organ into this vent between her legs came to play, she quivered, and released.

The overflow of stimulation proved too much for the inexperienced Alduin, and she stained the wood beneath her, and her own scales with a viscous, sweet-smelling liquid.

She panted, having kept her cry hidden beneath her now shivering claws, she glanced behind her at the doorway that lead back to the staircase.

The Dovahkin hadn't heard...

Alduin growled at herself, and tossed the book back inside the dresser, shut it, and attempted to mask her evidence by rubbing her foot over the stains to wear them down into the wood.

Satisfied, she tried to hide the shakiness in her walk, and trudged back down the staircase, thoughts of particular suicide and self-remorse flowing through her due to her prior act.

Voss put down his book and grinned dumbly at her.

"How's it going, buddy?"

She snarled.

"I'm not your buddy..."

She noted how she didn't yell it that time.

-0-0-0-0-0-


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3.

Travels! O-Travels!

-0-0-0-0-0-

With a desire to rend and kill, Alduin bore teeth as she attempted to beat the vile human, that had been nothing but the very bane of her existence for months.

She tactically tried everything, moved her forces westward and eastward...

Her battle was ultimately lost when Voss stated a single sentence...

"Checkmate, Al'."

Alduin lost her temper, and clawed marks into Chess-Board before her.

"Divines! Spare me from this insolence!" She spat.

"Hey," Voss held up his bare hands defensively. "-I call 'em as I see 'em."

"What?" She snapped.

"I'm not the one who moved their Queen into that open space." He pointed matter-of-factly at a section of the board, and she growled with a reddened fire building in her eyes.

"And... What's THAT supposed to mean, DOVAHKIN?"

"It means, you took your pretty little Queen, and ran her over with lawn mower."

"You know what?! GO KILL YOURSELF!"

The game pieces flew in every direction as the enraged little dragon tossed the board into the air, and stomped down from the crate she sat atop, grumbling under her breath.

In the hideous boredom and awkwardness invading her system, she had actually agreed to an HOUR of losing not one, not two, but THREE frigging matches of Chess, to the DOVAHKIN.

Now what, he was going to defeat her in board games TOO?!

"Dang, Al', you sure are grumpy."

"HOW CAN I NOT BE, YOU SOD?!" She hollered from her curled position in the corner of the foyer.

Voss sighed, and began to pick up the mess his new companion had created.

"Well, it is a clean slate, Alduin." He shrugged.

"Huh?" Her head raised to look at him.

"I mean, you can make all the wrongs right, start over, you know? Not many people get that chance."

His words at that moment had probably the most influence on her than anything he had ever said before, and that scared her as much as the knowing revelation, that he was ultimately right.

She growled, and resumed sulking.

She still couldn't get over this drastic change, one minute, she was dead, struck down by the Dragoborn, and the next, she hears the utter mocking and heaped insults from a hundred gods, and then, she awakes with the knowledge of her curse...

Basically for the poor Dragon, life sucked at the minute.

"Well, I'm going to the blacksmith." Voss stated, handling a rather intricate Glass-Sword in his hands. Without his armor on, she was able to eye him and the weapon with interest.

"Why?" Was all she intoned.

"'Cause this stupid blade is dulled..." He uttered, still examining the secondary weapon.

She was silent, and he waved a quick goodbye, and stepped outside the front door, and left a basic evil-villain to run rampant in his home...

It was unfortunate though, that Alduin couldn't do just THAT.

The gods, she knew, would kill her if she attempted to hamper or harm the Dragonborn...

With such a predicament, the Dragon sat in a curled ball for little more than a few minutes, before she threw her claws in the air.

"Damn it all..."

She trotted to the front door, opened it, snorted, and stepped outside.

-0-0-0-0-0-

"Hmmm." Voss hummed, observing his newly sharpened Glass-Sword in the hands of the blacksmith. "Looks good, Mr. Cellworth!" He gave a thumbs up, and the fat old man smiled appreciatively.

"Great, Voss. That'll be fifty."

Voss dumped the gold in his hand like it was nothing, and proceeded to turn back to his house with the sword, when a hideous scream filled the air.

There was only ONE reason, somebody in Whiterun was screaming like that...

"ITS A DRAGON!"

"Oh Gods! Save us!"

"Protect the children!"

"Somebody do something!"

"Good lord! I've soiled myself!"

The Dragonborn ran a hand down his face, and began a purposeful walk towards the main square of the city.

Right smack-dab in the center of the chaos, was indeed, Alduin, glaring daggers at the surrounding crowd of people and guards.

"BACK! Back you apes!" She sneered.

A guard, fascinated that Alduin of all things was so defenseless, went to poke the Dragon with his sword, prodding her like an animal.

She growled and swiped at his blade, knocking it aside.

"Hey! Hold the presses!" Voss snapped, pushing his way through the people of Whiterun to stand beside the Dragon. "This one's with me!"

"Dragonborn?!"

"Him and ALDUIN?"

"Traitor!"

Voss was now literally convinced these citizens were a bunch of patients at the funnyfarm whom had escaped captivity.

"No, you dolts! Look, YES, its Alduin, but look, he's a little squirt!" He gestured to the indignant Dragon, who really didn't know why she took offense to being called her original gender.

"And besides, he hasn't attacked any of you? Look..." Voss reached down to the gawking dragon, and scratched his finger under her chin. Her eyes went wild, and she swatted his hand aside.

"Get your filthy paw OFF me, DIRTBAG!"

"So, a little fussy. But that's what happens when the god's curse you to followership with the Dragonborn."

Alduin bowed her head in humiliation, and the citizens looked at her now, without fear, but curiosity, she was at least relieved the monkeys hadn't attempted to laugh...

The guards cast nervous glances to each other, knowing full well they were dealing with not only Whiterun's THANE, but also the DRAGONBORN.

It took another minute for people to disperse, all of their glances still locked on an angry, flushed Alduin.

Voss sighed in relief, and eyed the Dragon with a frown.

"Holy crud! You almost got us evicted!"

"Shut your mouth..." She grumbled, walking away like a punished dog back to the Breezehome. It took Voss a second, but he did indeed follow her.

When he had shut the door behind himself, he saw Alduin just sitting in a mortified daze in the back of the foyer. Amid his antics, and foolhardy mind, he realized that, even though he was excepting Alduin as a buddy, the Dragon had gone through a lot.

"Come on, Al'!" He tried. "How about those Honey-Nut-Treats?"

"Go die, please..."

"I'll take that as a YES!"

-0-0-0-0-0-

A coupling of cycles later, and Voss was in full Ebony Plate once more, and Alduin walked beside the human with a quiet demeanor, her head bowed, and tail drooped.

The roads as usual, were not really eventful, and also expected, she had held no idea where Voss was taking her. As she travelled beside her former rival, she couldn't help but stray her thoughts to the prior act she had committed...

"Hey, Al'?"

"What?" She huffed.

"That look like a good spot?"

She followed his gaze to a small pond by the side of the road, it was nice enough, and wasn't plagued with Mudcrabs...

"Fine..." She noticed her lack of insults, Alduin felt very defeated by this point.

She sat on her haunches on a rock that protruded from the sand around the small grouping of water, and Voss sat next to her a small distance, and took out two sweet-smelling stick-mounted candies.

She couldn't help being drawn to them, and he thrust one in her face with excitement.

"Aw, this is AWESOME! I'm just sittin' here having some Honey-Nut-Treats with my Dragon friend!"

She felt a reddened hue invading the sides of her snout as he said this AGAIN, and she chastised herself for the way her body was reacting to him.

She took the treat that was still hovering in her face, and held it firmly in her claw.

She jumped slightly from the CRUNCH! that sounded next to her, as Voss ate half of his in a single bite. He chewed noisily, and tapped his foot childishly while observing the water of the pond.

She watched him with fascination as she solemnly lapped at her own candy, admiring the sweet taste it held.

How could someone who had dealt with so much hardship, and enacted quite barbaric things be so... INNOCENT?

"Whatchya looking at, Alduin?" He asked with his mouth full.

"Nothing, Dovahkin." She snapped in surprise at him seeing her observations.

After they had sat and observed the pond, and finished their Honey candy, Alduin noticed a stone by her seat's base.

She bent, and retrieved the tiny rock, flicking the empty stick of her treat away, and turning the thing in her claws. Once, when she was still the World Eater, she had found a strange joy in skipping stones across the waters of Sovngarde...

Of course, they were more BOULDERS, back then...

But either way, it was kind of a thing where comparison mattered little, and it influenced you in way that the second you gave it up, you'd sooner take an arrow to the knee.

With a flick of her wrist, the rock jittered over the surface of the pond a total of four times, and vanished in a final splash.

She smiled, for once in the whole two days of this curse, she smiled.

"Holy frijoles!" Voss interrupted her scene. "I didn't know you could do that!"

Alduin rolled her eyes, and smiled at him like he was a moron...

"You know, Al', you look a LOT better when your happy."

She blushed heavily once more, and stood from her seat, these comments he made were starting to bother her.

Wordless, she began to walk back to the path, with him watching her go. Voss, being the oblivious, yet somewhat 'Awesome' as he put it, warrior he was, shrugged and followed her.

"Hey, Alduin?"

"What?"

"Let's play the Pantsy Game!"

She raised an eye ridge at him.

"Pardon?"

"Watch,"

With a deft, quick movement, Voss slunk into a nearby bush and stone grouping, and Alduin got the message to do the same.

In their view, a Farmer, a Nord fellow wearing a tunic and overalls, walked down the road quietly.

Alduin had little idea what her human companion planned, until it actually happened. A thin little rod of steel, constructed from what appeared to be clotheshangers, unfolded like a switchblade in Voss's hands, and he extended the thing towards the unsuspecting Farmer.

The rod had a hook on the end of it, and Voss used this, to hook under the man's pocket.

"Excuse me, sir?" Alduin had never heard Voss use such a squeaky voice before.

The Farmer spiraled around, catching his pants on the hook, and immediately, the chain-reaction was just too noticeable to ignore.

"Oh! Gracious, sir! You nasty pig!" Voss cried out in his squeak voice as the Farmer's pants tore themselves from his body in a hideous rip.

The man cried out in surprise and screamed something of 'Black Magic'.

"How dare you, sir! I'll punish you for that!"

As the Farmer covered his underwear, the rod poked into his exposed belly-button.

"Boink!"

The man cried out at the sudden touch, and unveiled his hands from his underwear to snatch at the now absent hook by his gut.

"Boink!"

Alduin chuckled as the Farmer bent in awkward directions, switching from covering one part of his prodded body to the other.

Voss provided no mercy.

"Boink! Boink! Boink! Oh come now, dear sir!" Finally, with a single poke on the forehead, the thin, near un-seeable hanger rod retracted without notice, and the Farmer ran, yelling his head off about being attacked by a ghost, his pants dragging by his ankles.

Alduin snickered at the whole ordeal, and watched as Voss toppled into the bush, laughing hysterically.

"Oh, boy! That was great!" He heaved, refolding the home-made prank contraption, and stowing it in a pouch. He continued chuckling a great deal, and Alduin, through the ridiculousness she had endured lately, felt herself quake with laughter.

The bush they sat in erupted like this for minutes to come, before Voss stepped out, and gestured for the Dragon to follow.

"See, Al'? I told you this wasn't going to be so bad!"

Alduin kept a smile, but refused to respond to that. Soon after, Voss had died his amusement down, and the trek had taken back on its quiet origin. As usual, he was the one that had to enact the conversation.

"Hey, Alduin?"

"Gods above... WHAT?"

"Check that out..."

Once again, Voss' plated gauntlet gestured to another form of location, though, this was no pond or road... It was a raggedy, wooden door that lead into the recesses of a cellar like structure.

She sniffed dismissively.

"What about a basement, Dovahkin?"

"I'm going in!"

Alduin watched him as he circled around her, and started a purposeful stride to the horrible looking indent in the ground.

She wanted to protest, some part of her just REALLY didn't want to die in her vulnerable form... Though, she supposed that could be an improvement...

But some part of her just wanted to cling to this, especially after what the Dovahkin had said about a clean slate...

She groaned in frustration, and hurried after him into the now ajar wooden doors.

"Woo! Is it dark in here boy!"

Somewhere amid the unnatural darkness, she lost him, with little light except occasional aqua-hues, she couldn't see the man as he walked deeper.

"Dovahkin!" She snapped. "Slow down..."

"What, Alduin?"

Oh Gods... His voice echoed.

He had to be a VERY long distance away from her.

For the first time since she had died as the original Alduin, the little Dragon felt an alien, and xenophobic emotion seep into her heart...

FEAR.

She turned back, unable to see the exit, and unable to see Voss.

"DOVAHKIN!" She called out.

Though, amid all of the mistakes she had made on this short journey, she never quite regretted as many compared to shouting out like that here...

A raspy, wet growl urged behind her, and Alduin yipped in surprise, barely leaping back from a strange weapon slicing in her direction.

She gathered this was no ordinary cellar anymore, when the sight of a grey-colored, hunched, and eyeless monster came before her.

She realized exactly whom had found her now...

As three more of the beings, armored in parts of insectoid shell, and carrying weapons forged from bugs' parts, she never saw the big one wielding the shield until a final thought echoed through her head.

FALMER.

Then, the Gloomlurker slammed that very shield into her snout, and Alduin's world went black at the hands of some of the mortal filth she had hoped to exterminate...

-0-0-0-0-0-


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4.

Double Captivity.

-0-0-0-0-0-

She was a proud individual...

At least, once she was... When SHE was a HE.

The reasoning of why the Gods had changed her gender was still a mystery to her, and even the pairing of all things with her arch rival, being more of a query.

However, the Dovahkin in his... Unique, state of mind seemed perfectly fine working with her, and she decided that maybe, after all of the attempts on his life, the evils she had committed to destroy his world...

The fact that he had bested the most powerful Dragon in existence at the time...

Alduin finally came to a conclusion, that Voss wasn't the one who was wrong here.

In a matter of three days, Alduin had gone from a conniving, vindictive and tyrannical male overlord of death and evil Draconic kind, to a confused, somewhat heated, and pathetic little female Dragoness.

Her mind was in tatters, and for the first time during her imprisonment beneath this cellar, for the first time since she had been REBORN, she cried.

Alduin had now experienced three previously unheard of emoticons within her body... And she knew these elements, as Arousal, Joy, and now, Sadness.

The chitin cage the Falmer kept her in was littered with debris, and even a dead Skeever lay in the corner, freshly killed.

Alduin had long lost herself on attempts to frighten the blind monsters, her curses and foul language were eventually met with physical harm.

The Gloomlurker, the heavily armored Falmer here, had beaten her at least once, that was really all she could remember.

Her lithe body was bruised, and scales cracked under the attention, she lay in a heap about the ground, until... A curious noise entered her hearing.

She hadn't expected saving, especially from the Dragonborn... She had assumed Voss dismissed her disappearance as a convenience. However, the death-noises of Falmer kind of sent that theory down the toilet.

"Damn man! Peel the skin off your eyes!"

A hacking sound, and a Falmer in the back of the chamber lost his head.

"By dairy cows, it stinks in here... Hey! You!"

The Gloomlurker, her abuser and tormentor for the entirety of the night, was severed in two from Voss' Ebony Warhammer.

"Buy a bar of soap, ass-munch!"

Alduin remained silent in her caged area as the Dovahkin further humiliated her by coming to the rescue, and didn't say a word as he cut down the last of the Falmer.

She heard him examine the area, and a quick "Aha!" come from outside her cage. A second later, and the claw-like gate to her pen was snapped open by a forceful strike from the Hammer.

"There you are, Buddy! Now, what do you say we-"

Voss stopped talking when he saw her state, the bruises covering her, the damaged hide... Alduin lay defeated on the ground, and kept flowing a fresh batch of tears from her straying eyes.

Voss knelt before her, and he heard him yank something from a pouch.

"N-No..." She sputtered. "-I want... To D-die..."

He lifted her snout in his hand, and poured the healing potion into her mouth forcibly, and she shut her eyes in anger than she wasn't going to perish.

"I can't do that, Alduin."

She'd never heard him so serious... Other than their battle in Sovngarde...

"Can you walk?"

She didn't respond.

Voss bent, and more gently than usual, slung the Dragoness over his shoulder, and began to retrace his steps to the underground's exit.

Apparently, this once cellar had been acting as a outpost for this band of Falmer, who now lay dead about the caverns.

A hint of satisfaction flowed over him when they hit daylight, and Voss rejoined the road, Alduin over his arm. She said nothing, and murred slightly when he stroked a hand over her back. For the strangest of reasons, she... Liked, this new side of him less than the prior.

That day though, their views on one another changed quite drastically.

-0-0-0-0-0-

"Rise and shine, buddy!"

The Dragon was stone still in Voss' bed, curled in a cocoon of sheets and furs, she tensed and writhed tighter as he shook her repeatedly.

"Get up, Al'! We have a lot to do today." Voss said in a sing-song voice, and began to poke her on the head with his index finger.

"Go away..." She muttered.

"Nope! I'm keeping a closer eye on you for now on, Buddy!"

"I'm not your frigging buddy..."

Voss tore the sheets off of her in a swift motion, and the Dragon hissed like a disturbed snake at the unwelcome sunlight that flooded into the bedroom.

It was quite a deed that Voss performed, letting her sleep in his bed, but now, it was also quite a annoying notion, that he began to rock her slumped body back and forth.

"Allllldduuuuiiiiinnnn..." He sang. "-Riiiiisssseee annnddd SHIIIINNNNEEE!"

She moaned unintelligently, and covered her narrowed eyes with her claws.

"Shut up..." She growled.

Suddenly, Voss ceased his efforts, and, without a word, walked away and out of the room. Alduin sighed in satisfaction, and scratched at the little bandages that covered her wounds, her leg kicked, and she began to fall asleep again...

She never noticed Voss' head slowly peak up from the side of the mattress, his face contorted, as if he were on a stealth mission.

"Alduin..." He whispered. She didn't hear him.

Her eyes snapped open as two gauntlets clasped over her cheekbones, squishing her face in a fish-like motion. Her neck creaked as he turned her to face him.

She stared in utter shock.

"WAKE. UP. FISHY."

"SOVNGARDE SAVE ME!" She wailed, tearing away from him, and stretching her lithe form on the bed. "What could possibly have you SO worked UP?"

"C'mon Alduin, don't you know what today is?"

"No, you ape..."

"Oh, silly me..." He shook his head in musing. "I didn't tell you."

He stood, and walked over to the dresser by his bed, and Alduin noticeably tensed as his hands reached for the top drawer. Her breath stopped...

Then he grabbed the drawer below it, and retracted his hands with a tiny vase.

She exhaled in relief, and pawed her face to hide the blush.

"Today is my old-man's birthday!" He cheered.

She rolled her eyes. Great, now after she'd been forcibly bound to ONE crazy Dragonborn... She had to meet his family, too?

Voss saw her disdain.

"Oh, don't worry, he doesn't even live here. We're going to the Courier Office!"

Her expression didn't really change, and the human came to terms that his friend didn't know what mail was.

"I'm going to send him this vase as a Birthday present!" He stated.

Alduin tilted her head in curiosity.

"Why? What is this... 'Birthday Present' you speak of?"

Now normally, Voss would have been drinking something when somebody said something like that, and promptly, the nearest wall, or person, would be drenched in a cloud of the released liquid from his mouth.

He indeed remembered a good number of occasions he'd gotten into fights because of that...

Instead, Voss just shrugged.

He knew, it was quite anticlimactic.

"Well, in our culture, the person whose Birthday it is gets gifts to celebrate the day they were born." He explained.

"You've never had a Birthday?"

Alduin, fascinated by this knowledge, shook her head dumbly, the previous looks of anger and annoyance bulldozed by a childish curiosity.

"Don't you have parents?"

"No..."

"Relatives?"

"A brother."

"Oo! Where is he?"

"Laying in a pit somewhere, dead, with a wound from one of your swords." Alduin stated factually.

Voss ignored the comment, and gestured for her to follow him. As they trekked down the stairs, Voss held the door for her at the end.

She snorted, and walked through before he closed and locked it.

The people in Whiterun stared at her as she trotted by the Dragonborn's side, and neared a little shack by the wall's edge. A sign clearly read in common, "COURIER".

Alduin watched as he opened the door, let her go in first, and stepped in after.

The inside of the place was stacked with boxes of letters, packages and all manner of mailing and packing equipment.

The Dragon curiously explored her surroundings, ignoring the fearful glance from the clerk as he talked with Voss.

She sniffed inside a few boxes, and toyed with an empty envelope in her claws. All of this new mortal stuff was beginning to interest her...

Very quickly though, Voss sealed the beautiful little vase in a package, gave it to the clerk, and walked outside with the Dragon, never noticing she still held the envelope in her palms.

"Dovahikin..." She began. "-What is THIS?"

He looked down at her and her new prize,

"Oh, that? That's an envelope. You put paper, letters, trinkets, small things you want to ship to somebody in it. Oh, and Al'?"

She glanced at him.

"-I have a name."

Alduin raised an eye ridge at him, now coming to terms she had been calling him 'Dovahkin' the entirety of the time.

"Good for you." She snapped.

He pulled his hood over his now applied helmet, and walked towards the gates to Whiterun. The Dragon followed as he pushed them open so he could fit both of them through, and then closed them.

Outside, the weather was in its usual Spring-state in this section of Skyrim, birds and frogs sang their natural songs in the air.

Alduin shook her head, daydreaming, and hurried to catch up to the whistling Dragonborn as he went down the ramp to the grounds around the city.

They walked no more than a few minutes, and Voss lead her to the next, most likely deranged errand.

She watched him cautiously as he neared a large Watchtower, partially ruined, on the edges of Whiterun. A banner of the hold flowed from its side, and two guards watched the Dragonborn approach with interest.

"Dragonborn." One of them nodded to him in acknowledgement, the human stopping at the foot of the small stairs to the tower's entrance.

"Hey peeps."

The two soldiers looked at each other upon him saying this unknown word.

"Is Ranch around?"

Before they could respond, a crazed, redneck-sounding voice shouted behind the two guards.

"Hey boys! Look! An incline!"

A dirtied finger attached to a dirtied arm jabbed around the left guard's stiffened shoulder. A second later, and two of these grimy paws grabbed the man's shoulders, and with a yelp on his part, sent him rolling down the stairs with a series of shuffles and clangs.

Voss sniffed absentmindedly as the guard rolled before his boots unconscious.

A strange, hill-billy laugh gargled in a disgusting looking Whiterun guard's gullet, his robes torn, and armor and helm stained with beer.

The other guard growled in annoyance, stepping down to retrieve his comrade's twitching form.

The redneck waved like a girl to the soldier who dragged the knocked-out man back inside, the fallen's head jerking as it bashed on each step.

Alduin watched this transpire with a stunned look.

The freak before her, known apparently as Ranch, gazed at Voss with a goofy expression beneath his helm.

"'Eyyyy! Its my good friend, Voss!" He stepped down from the archway, and went to shake Voss' hand, when he saw Alduin sitting nervously by his side.

A strange jerk racked Ranch's body, and he pulled out a broom from, well, seemingly nowhere.

"Damn 'gators! GET OFF MY LAWN!"

He began to prod the broom at the insulted Dragon, before Voss snatched the wooden pole up, and broke it on his knee.

"Ranch... C'mon man, she's a friend."

Ranch didn't seem to pay much attention to Alduin after this, and fell to his knees at his broken broom. Sniffles escaped him, before he rose his clenched fists to the air above.

"YOU KILLED TIMOTHY!"

"Good god, man! You named ANOTHER broom?" Voss asked with a roll of his eyes.

"Yeah..." Ranch sniffed. "-Ever since what happened to Robert..."

Voss shrugged.

"And, what happened to THAT broom?"

"I peed on him." Ranch said dryly.

Alduin palmed her claw over her face, and followed as the two men walked over to a pile of rubble by the tower's side. Ranch reached into his pocket, and yanked a map from it.

"So, Voss and 'gator-friend," He asked. "Whatchyall need to know?"

-0-0-0-0-0-


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5.

Thanks for the Tip.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Ranch, if considered dull and quite insane before, was now a mental patient in the mind of Alduin as she felt her left chop begin to jerk in disturbance.

The only scarier part of this whole screwed-up scene, was that Voss had been friends with this douche for YEARS, according to him. Alduin had long given up trying to hear what they were whispering about the different locations of Skyrim, and settled her head beneath her claws.

She felt a poke on her flank, and she stared up at Voss as he waved goodbye to the strangely-walking Ranch.

"Alright, Al', you ready to go?"

"Go where?"

"Places, my Dragon-friend, places." He smiled.

The tower gradually shrunk into the backdrop as they trekked away down the cobble, bypassing three deer that ran like they had just seen Lucifer when Alduin glared at them.

Voss began to fiddle with his fingers at his side, toying with some small trinket that she couldn't identify.

Upon noting her staring, he stowed it in a pocket, grinning sheepishly. Silence seemed a commonality now after they had just barely grown used to the other being there, and Voss noted how it was beginning to get dark out.

Maybe, just maybe, if he'd stopped listening to Ranch's tales of using rakes to battle Trolls off of one of his many 'Lawns', they wouldn't have run so late. Voss growled and pointed with his thumb to a cluster of rocks nearby,

"I'm setting camp, buddy."

"Not your buddy." She snapped on instinct, eyeing him as he began to set up a grouping furs from one of the pouches he held.

Technically, as with most things of the Dragonborn, it was improbable, seeing as these sleeping mats were three times the size of the pouches they came out of, Alduin just stopped trying to figure the whole mystery out.

While many would begin to flail their arms in hysterics at Voss' next motion, Alduin just kind of stared.

He removed his armor, and left nothing covering his skinny torso, which made her glue her eyes to him. Soon though, as he whistled, oblivious to her troubles, the sensation of sickness came over her again, her inability to ogle her arch enemy, less of all a HUMAN, taking control once more.

"You know, despite the wack-jobs that run around this place at night, I've always felt so safe under the gaze of THAT."

Alduin snapped her head upwards to the dazzling array of stars and constellations that covered and gridded Skyrim's sky, she felt sorrow for herself she'd tried to DESTROY it...

"Why, Dovahkin?" She asked lightly.

"Because, I'd imagine some of my unknown relatives are just staring back, wishing I could see their waving hands... Being below such sights intrigues the mind, I'll tell you."

She listened to him intently as he set a fire within a small clump of wood (And, surprise! She held no idea where those came from either...) and lay the twin mats beside it.

"Dovahkin..." She muttered, stepping onto her respective mat. "-What were you holding before?"

He chuckled, and knelt on his own sleeping apparatus. "I'd thought you'd ask..."

He slipped his hands back into the pocket, the same that held the trinket, and retrieved whatever it was, hiding it in his grasp. She edged her head about to see.

"Alduin," He addressed her seriously again, and she felt her eyes go wide. "-Look, I know you've been through a lot lately. Its a big change being, well... A girl," He cut himself off, noting her blush.

"-And being cursed by the gods to be a 'Pet' to your rival. Alduin, I want you to know, you are NO pet to me. Honestly, I know you don't see this as an opportunity as much as I do, but, I can say, I'm really willing to be your friend."

He shrugged.

"-I mean, c'mon, who the hell gets to play Chess with a Dragon? Much less one like yourself."

She drew a circle in the fur of her mat, and bent her head in a deepening blush, if it were possible, her whole head would be red.

"So, I am inclined, to give you this..." He unraveled his hands, and revealed the priceless, blue, and aqua-highlighted Sapphire beneath. The gem shined in the light of the constellations, and Alduin stepped closer, taking hold of his outstretched hand with her claws.

"I give these to my closest friends, so far, I've only relieved two of these in my whole life." He extended it further to her. "-I know you really don't like me, but I want you to have it."

Why was this man intent on changing her? Why was he intent on forging unknown feelings in her body and mind...

Alduin's prior visage as a male, her former desires and attraction, even the largest piece of her hatred for humanity, and most of all, the Dragonborn, were bulldozed beneath a torrent of a clean-slate.

A tear left her eye, and she never really realized what happened, until her vision cut out, and a warm sensation obscured the tip of her snout, something lay beneath her...

Oh lords of Sovngarde...

Her eyes snapped open, filled to their vision's brim with Voss' innocent, flushed and wild eyes, they were wide, like dinner plates, and his hands were posed, frozen, defensively, beneath her stomach. She lay on top of him, their mouths locked.

The Sapphire had fallen on the mat beside them, and Alduin disconnected the attachment of their chops, leaving a string of saliva to connect them for a short while. Holy smokes, she'd even rammed her tongue down his throat!

"U-Um..." She stuttered, quivering, her face turning a shade of bright red, and Voss still stuck like a statue below her, his frightened gaze locked to her.

Her breasts pressed into his chest, and she wiped her mouth repeatedly with her claw in a futile attempt to admonish what had just occurred.

"V-Voss... I-I'm... So sorry... I..." Her apologizing was enough of shock factor to add.

Voss was speechless, and observed as the Dragoness stepped off of him, and retrieved the Sapphire.

"I... Can understand, i-if you w-want it back..."

He shook his head slowly, tortoise-like, indicating for her to keep it. She had a saddened look in her eyes as he slowly got up, and sniffed, before curling up in his sleeping mat.

"Night." Was all he said, and it was over.

Alduin sat on her haunches, and stared at the Sapphire in her grasp. For three hours into the night, she did nothing but lose her eyes in the blue of the gem.

Finally, long after Voss couldn't hear her amid sleep, she wailed into the furs of her mat, crying like a small child, and feeling nothing but humiliation at yet ANOTHER strike against her once proud nature...

Now, she was not only stuck with the Dragonborn, cursed by the Gods, AND female...

But now, she was confused.

-0-0-0-0-0-

With a branching feelings of light, wisps of illumination that burrowed into her dried, puffy eyelids stained from the night's activity, Alduin opened them sluggishly, and stared into the morning sky.

It was blue, with hints of grey and white, a normal overcast for Skyrim.

She examined the clouds for the longest of times, before she smelled something... Good. She sat up slowly, and watched Voss' back turned to her as he mulled over the relit fire. Pangs of yet more guilt and new emotions hit her as she recalled what exactly she had done.

What was even more rocking, was that she cradled the Sapphire in her grasp like a child.

She stood, still holding the gem, and slowly went towards the human, where she silently sat on her haunches by his side, watching the three cooked eggs that he made in another mysteriously appearing object, a pan.

"Morning." He stated blandly.

She didn't like that, she didn't like the way he sounded, OR the lack of enthusiasm. It disturbed her, and she put on a fake, deceiving smile.

She found herself changing with every conversation she had with him... And now, after this short time, she KNEW why the Gods had punished her this way.

They all knew what would happen... They always did.

They knew that she would let her new feminine attraction take hold, and allow it to plough away her old ways of flesh. They also got it, that the Dragonborn may have been a dope...

But he was the kindest, and strongest man (Despite the skinniness) in Skyrim, and possibly Tamriel.

Alduin found her head lowered as she thought of all of this. Three DAYS, and the mighty Alduin had made a damned checklist of screw-ups...

And the last check, was making out with a GUY...

Even though she was... SHE, now, Alduin had been male with male thoughts for as long as she could remember. Last night was a mistake, maybe she didn't want to believe it, but, facts were facts...

It was unfortunate for her, that facts felt... Kind of good...

The libidos that had rushed through her system on these two occasions, they were both very, very similar, but the main divider, was that the most recent, had felt the BEST.

As she looked at the silent Voss, she couldn't tear her eyes away from him, her new female desires taking place once more.

"Here you go."

His words scrambled her thoughts, and she looked down at the small wooden plate holding two of the three eggs.

He might as well have swallowed his in a single bite, and smiled cheaply at her, before stepping back to pack everything up.

Alduin ate in silence, using her claws in near-futile attempts with a fork she had been given.

After awhile, the silence began to hurt her.

"Dovahkin... You are... Unusually quiet."

"Oh," He muttered, as if he really didn't know.

She tapped her foot, and watched as he adorned his Ebony Armor.

"Dovahkin?"

"Yes, Alduin?"

She was taken aback at the slightly perturbed tone in his voice, and for once, she managed to control her temper.

"Why?" She quizzed.

She saw him roll his shoulders and sigh.

"Al', its not really... My thing, to kiss..." He trailed, not deciding whether to use 'A Guy' or 'A Dragon'.

"I am no longer male." She answered for him, and he felt relief at that.

"Look, it just feels... Awkward, alright. I know your kind of... Straying, from your old self, which, I don't mind!" He laughed. "But, I just don't know how I feel about what you... Did, last night."

Alduin didn't really respond as the camp vanished, the mats being put away, and the fire stamped out, she toyed with the fork on her plate until Voss retrieved it from her.

The road clacked under his boots, and her claws once more.

The morning was alight with different wildlife, birds and elk, deer, all manner of animals that Alduin took fascination in watching, as, after all, she never really got to see LIVE animals a lot.

Voss, though feeling quite attacked from last night, his slight craziness really didn't allow him to stay upset for too long...

He began to whistle.

And Alduin felt relief that the incident had been forgotten.

-0-0-0-0-0-

"Damn man! Who knew the lake had CRABS?!"

Alduin actually recognized the humor in Voss' joke, causing her to uncharacteristically chuckle amid her observing his hack-fest through a series of Mudcrabs.

Each arachnid-like creature was cut down with graceful swipes from the Ebony Warhammer he held, a series of Kung-foo noises coming from Voss' helm.

"Hi-yah!"

A crab lost its pincers.

"Hoowah!"

Another was sliced in two.

Before even another minute had passed, perhaps ten of the creatures lye in varying forms of dismemberment about Voss' feet. He began to do perform a strange grouping of movements, and Alduin watched him keenly as his fists pumped, and hips jerked.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

"Its my jig." He stated.

She claw-palmed herself.

-0-0-0-0-0-

"I spot a... Round object, with a wooden top!"

"Its the well..."

"Damn, Al'! How did you know?!"

"Because we have circled it twice, Dovahkin..."

Indeed, the same well they has passed numerous times on this stretch of path was indicated by Voss' little eye-spy game again...

By now, Alduin was getting angry with her inability to really fly anymore, and gazed about the surrounding woods with nervousness.

"This sucks..." Voss muttered while pouting. "-You still don't like any of my games!"

"Not surprising." Alduin said.

As they rounded another bend, Voss suddenly looked up, and a strange occurrence happened.

Alduin never really saw the bolt of energy until it cracked to nothingness on Voss' breastplate, effectively sending the Dragonborn onto his backside with an upkick of dust.

"Ouch!" He snapped, the Ebony Warhammer already in his grasp.

Alduin had a wild look in her eyes as three, heavily armored, golden warriors stepped towards them, one, adorned in fine, black robes, readying another bolt in his palms.

She knew EXACTLY whom these High Elves were...

"Oh, come ON!" Voss complained, running at the Thalmor kill-team with a raging sprint. "-You guys are STILL pissed?"

The two female warriors took a severe beating from the Dragonborn, the Hammer slicing into their elven armor, even cutting them, and to Alduin's shock, they still didn't go down.

Apparently, Voss was expecting it, and as the first one fell with his Hammer in her back, he decked the other High Elf in the face with his gauntlet.

Her swing at him was stalled, and she stumbled back, giving the Magic-user in the rear a clean shot.

Alduin attempted to hide behind a tree when bolts of electricity that didn't bounce off of Voss, hit around her location in kicks of dirt.

The second Thalmor warrior lost her head, and Voss ran at the shocked Magic-user.

"Frigging wimp! Take some melee like a man!" Voss commented, digging his Hammer into the elf. "I swear, you Dominion creeps just make me sick!"

The Elf died silently, and was tossed to the ground via kick.

"I've only killed HALF of your comrades! Jeez, take a chill-pill..."

Alduin quivered slightly as all that filled her vision was images of the energy bolts around her, she pressed to the tree, and only emerged when Voss strapped his Hammer to his back once more.

She stared at him as he swung his arms a little from the effort of using that weapon.

"Good workout I suppose." He said as if nothing had transpired. "Keeps the blood flowing, you know?"

"No, Dovahkin... I don't."

Voss folded his arms.

"I. Have. A. Name."

"Good for you."

"Good for you, Voss! Your such a loser, Voss! I'm just acting annoyed cause I have a crush on you, Voss!" He blurted in a mimic-voice.

"Great carpel-muffins, Al', you really need to hide your emotions better."

Alduin by this point turned red again, and clenched her claws into balled fists, glaring with a hint of betrayal to the human.

"You mock my affection, HUMAN?"

Voss held his hands up in self-defense.

"No. I'm just telling you, you really should cut the crap."

"What's THAT supposed to mean?!"

"Stop acting opposite of how you feel."

"Listen you OGRE!" She snapped. "Its pretty obvious you still think of me as a GUY, so, why display my sudden interest when you act like every Dragon I courted?"

Voss tilted his head.

"Huh?"

"Yeah, big shocker there!" Alduin cursed. "Only, I guess your not AFRAID of me, now are you? OH, heavens no! You just think I'm disgusting, for only doing what comes naturally with the curse!"

Voss went to interject before she cut him off.

"SHUT YOUR MOUTH!"

He jumped at how loud her voice had gotten.

"I'm no longer the WORLD EATER, or, DRACONIC TYRANT! NO! I'm some pathetic little female now, who can't fight, can't get her old life back, can't be happy, and most of all, CAN'T BE LOVED!"

Voss really didn't know how to respond as the little Dragon began to cry again. He supposed that the original Alduin really WAS gone then... And he suddenly felt ashamed of his reaction with the Sapphire that night...

Alduin clutched something close to her face, laying on the side of the road, heaving with tears.

As he neared closer, he saw indeed, it was the same gem he'd given her.

Now, he felt like a boil on Satan's ass.

"Alduin..." He muttered, kneeling beside her, and rubbing a gauntlet down her back. "-I can't tell you I'm sorry... Because words aren't enough here."

She sniffled, and looked up at him.

"Nobody has ever given me anything, Voss..." He brightened as she used his name, twirling the Sapphire in her grasp.

"Well, I'm glad I could have been the first. Alduin, I don't think your disgusting... Your new body is probably the prettiest I've ever seen on a person."

She blushed again.

"Its just strange for me... Not only did I kill you once, but you were also, well, a GUY."

Taking into context this recently overlooked statement, Alduin wiped her eyes, and leant into Voss' leg, still toying with the Sapphire.

"I'm not HIM anymore..." She muttered.

He was curious as to the notion this little Dragon was attempting, why had she begun to develop such an interest for him all of a sudden? Frankly, the entirety of the situation was just strange, and Voss was perturbed that after so LONG of boredom amid Skyrim...

THIS, is how it had to be solved.

-0-0-0-0-0-

A plume of pure shadow erupted from the very earth like a torrent of water. It bubble sickly, transpired into a shape that was vaguely humanoid.

The liquid darkness glistened in the moonlight above, and gradually walloped and hardened, forming twin wrinkled, bony arms, two similar legs, a torso and ugly skeletal head, all covered in a thick layer of ancient plating.

Little effort arose from the groaning creature whilst it stood to its full height, stretching its recently reformed limbs with creaks of flesh-less connections.

A triple-tusked helm covered this monster's head, two of the ivory pieces jutting to the heavens, and two more protruding on the sides of the cheek-plates.

Layered, bulky and rune-inscribed shouldeplates were adhered to sheets of chainmail that draped over its thin shoulders. A curved, ribbed, breastplate covered a vest of the mail, and was layered with extra armor, a collection of human skulls hung by chains over the beast's gut.

The Draugr lord rolled its joints, knocking the varied troll, man, and animal skulls that hung from the stakes pointing from its fur cape.

These trophies dangled in the air, and stared lifelessly as the undead cast its vision about.

The surrounding plains were devoid of all but plant life, and that was exactly the way he wanted things.

"Praise to the Gods for their generosity..." A hideous, garbled, and deepened voice growled from the Draugr's evilly grinning jaws.

"-Our good companion has revealed himself... Or rather..." The eight-foot tall warlord stepped a good foot away from his original point of entry to the mortal world, and gazed over the twenty story drop that developed before him.

"-Or rather, HERSELF..." He chuckled, falling to a knee and observing the two shapes on the below road with interest.

"Ah. The opposites shift, and visages of reason change with the wind." He stated. "I can feel your tenseness, child."

A wrinkled, ancient finger extruded to the direction of the small Dragon that trotted beside a tall, skinny, heavily armored human.

Suddenly, a bellow escaped the Draugr, a conniving, and evil laugh.

"-Hark ye! To any whom hear me! The Gods! They are nothing but thoughtless fools of attrition and self-chastisement! Look, brothers, they harbor their mistake in this comedic output of a punishment..."

The hulking, plated arms at the undead's sides raised to the air, and his chin kicked upwards, he stood to his full height.

"-Behold! The very folly of existence! I have sung my song into the night, been portrayed by rusted hate and maliciousness of falsities."

The ring of an abnormal, rare metal dazzled by his hip, the serrated, elongated Ebony Sword drawn by his right hand, and thrust into the night.

"-So proclaims the savior of olden Nords! The revelation of the dead, and bane of the living! I, am Asylum! Warlord of the Draconic Cathedral and true Nine Holds! I proclaim, that Alduin, my only obstacle, is NO MORE!"

His arms lowered, and the globular masses of tens of more shadowy liquids began to burrow from the ground behind him. He paid no heed.

"I am, Asylum!" He cried, voice traveling for miles on end.

"And I claim Tamriel, for the dead."

-0-0-0-0-0-


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6.

Enemies of MORE Enemies.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Voss considered two things mainly grinding his gears at the moment, and those two things revolved around a cocoon of indigestion, and expedient desire to find the leaders of the Dominion, and promptly sever their genitals from their bodies.

Yeah, to top off the day, Voss was angry enough to amputate somebody's thang with a rusty spoon.

At least six of the Elves had sprung from cover when he and Alduin had entered the small intersection in the travel routes, most of them, except the two wizards, armed and armored to the teeth with Elven blacksmith byproducts.

Voss ducked and spiraled, weaved and slashed when a opportunity presented, the Thalmor so far had gained nothing but harmless, glancing blows.

Finally, one of the Elves was severed from his hip, and the others stumbled back from the spray of blood.

"The Dominion will prosper, mortal!" One of them shouted.

"Your little club eats dog-shit on Tuesdays..." Voss muttered, decapitating the same fellow to shout that out.

Alduin had long been hiding behind a tree, somewhat expecting him to win, and waiting for the fighting to end. Nagging feelings within her screamed for her to help... But, how could she? She was now weak...

She didn't think she had-

Shouts.

Breath.

Magic.

She smiled in realization.

With a leap out from cover, a Dominion Soldier was near vaporized as the little Dragon opened her mouth, and obliterated the Elf with a blast of reddish energy.

She shook her head, feeling lightheaded.

"I guess... I can't do that, too often..."

The Thalmor Soldiers turned from Voss as he chopped the life from their Wizards, and began to slash their weapons in the dazed Alduin's direction.

She yelped, and threw herself away with a flap of her wings, landing in a puff of dust to the road.

Voss had screamed something angrily at HIS rivals closing in on her, and tackled the Soldier behind the first adversary.

Alduin gulped as this High Elf woman raised her battleaxe into the air, half of her torso slashed off from the fight with Voss.

The Thalmor bellowed a curse upon their souls, and brought the weapon downwards in a strike, that Alduin knew she wouldn't survive...

At that second, her mouth opened in a terrible scream of fear...

Much to her own relief, Alduin improvised with a little... Happy accident.

The wounded Thalmor was thrown away in three burning pieces from the Dragon's energy breath, and Voss stood from the Elf he'd literally neck-snapped, to watch with an impressed demeanor as the flying firework slammed into a nearby rock.

Alduin panted, a bit quaky, and she was silenced by the tiny clapping of Voss' gauntlets in a Victorian theatre style.

"Nice work, Al'! We make a great team!"

Voss seemed to mind little when she hoisted herself on his back, and he effectively carried her down the road, supporting her front claws with his wrapping palms.

She laid her head on top of his hood, a content smile on her chops.

"Hey! We should come up with a name for this team of Epicness!" Voss snapped his fingers. "-How about, the 'Heap-O-Gunz?'"

She shook her head in amusement.

"No, Dovahkin..." She stayed quiet, but then corrected. "-I mean, Voss..."

He seemed to become more chipper after that, and suggested another name.

"'Super-Sharp-Techno-Twins?'"

"Nah..."

"Um... 'Tank-An-Chop?'"

"Nuh-uh..."

Voss pondered a little more.

"'Chocolate-Bolts-of-Demise?'"

"How about..." Alduin peaked over the top of his hood with her face, gazing at him upside-down with a goofy grin over her elongated, reptilian chops.

She originally though her next sentence was a bad idea...

But quickly saw the fruits of her labor later in this adventure for saying it.

"-The Buddies?"

Voss nodded vigorously.

"Aw-Hell yeah!"

They laughed amid their walk, unaware of the sleek, hunched figure that strode through the surrounding thickets soundlessly.

Their conversation was forgotten by him, and the Thalmor Justiciar marked the location on his rolled-map with a flick of ink from a quill. In seconds, the tracker, the stalker whom had observed his comrades die in the belief of needed sacrifices... Vanished as he teleported back to the Dominion.

The stack of stealth seemed to thicken though, and the hunter, failed to recognize, he'd been followed as well.

The bubbling puddles of shadow-like energy finished their dissolving into the earth, and the fate of our heroes, was sealed.

-0-0-0-0-0-

"Your positive? The heretic STILL lives?"

"Lord Executioner, I know a still squirming rodent when I see one."

Ul'Thu Kaalimoa was exceptionally impressed by this... VOSS.

He snickered as the Justiciar before him, one of his personal rangers and spy's, handed him the slip of rolled map that held the Dominion's bane in location.

Ul'Thu was a powerful High Elf in the Dominion, Lord Executioner, and man in charge of reclaiming Skyrim for the glory of the Thalmor. Since the death of Tullius, the summary losses of nearly all Thalmor officials in the province, the Highest Ones had appointed him to lead the recovery.

So far, two of his most skilled Kill-Teams had been slaughtered by this 'Dragonborn' and his pet, whom, many were claiming as the long defeated Alduin.

Of course, he dismissed that as hogwash. Alduin was dead, and that was a fact.

"Still squirming, you say?" Ul'Thu muttered, handing his agent back the map, the beautiful suit of golden, Elven armor he wore glinting in the showing sun of the stained-glass windows around him.

The Justiciar was silent as his Lord paced.

"We have tried much, no? To kill this mortal. To burn his soul for the heresy against the Dominion."

"Yes, Lord."

"I really must say, the little-blotch on reality has me impressed." Ul'Thu snickered. This deep in Solitude, the only still Imperial-loyal hold in Skyrim, he could voice anything he wanted without fear.

With a quick dismiss of his hand, Ul'Thu said a final order as the agent departed.

"Prepare the Rangers."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Through the mazes of trees, thickets and their enwrapping forest-floors... Something, she couldn't place what, traveled through the obstacle course to tell her there was a problem.

Alduin's ability to sense trouble for HERSELF, seemed to be helping her get a whiff of global problems too, the feeling of instability just met her on the breath of the wind.

Still atop Voss' shoulders as he sang another awkward, unknown and unheard of grouping of lyrics about Walking a Lonely Road, she began to edge her way back down to the ground.

"Hey, Al', what are you doing?"

"Um... I have too... Use a bush." She smiled sheepishly.

Voss just stared at her below him for a second, and then held his gauntlets up in knowing.

"Oh, I get it." He stated. "-I'll wait here."

Alduin stepped past him, and into the brush that enveloped the land around the road. Twigs and leaves crunched under her palms as she walked, and she grew quieter when the sound of colliding steel met her hearing.

The Dragon knew another road was nearby, and obviously, something was occurring on its girth.

She poked her head around a tree, and her eyes nearly rolled out of their sockets at the sight of such a gigantic being.

She knew of the Undead in Skyrim, the fearsome Draugr that defended their tombs with unrelenting maliciousness, and absence of mercy. However, the one before her seemed unbelievable compared to a commoner of its kind.

A matted fur cape billowed behind it, stakes filled with chained skulls protruding above it from a plate underneath the fur, layers of inscribed, rune-laden Nordic armor covered over sheets of chainmail, and skulls gathered in a chain over its exposed abdomen.

The six tusks that jutted from the lord's helm gave his visage an even more demonic look to it, and Alduin had to tear her eyes from him when she saw a fresh streak of blood fly over his armor.

She now noted the tens of Thalmor, the High Elves standing utterly little chance against this undead and its minions, regular sized Draugr armored with less-bulky and present, but similar looking plating to their leader's.

Ancient Nordic weapons were clutched in their grimy, wrinkled hands, and they battled the Thalmor viciously.

At least eight of the Dominion soldiers lay dead about the road, and the lord Draugr released a deepened, rasped cackle as he slowly removed the carcass of a Justiciar from his serrated Ebony Blade.

Alduin gulped loudly.

One by the one, the Elves lost their numbers, and the leader hacked twin Soldiers in half with little effort.

Suddenly, as quickly as the battle began, it ended, with a single, wounded and near-dead Thalmor being lifted from where he attempted to crawl away into the forest.

The Draugr lord hoisted the fully armored man with one massive gauntlet, and clenched the Elven metals by his breast, crushing them in hideous creaks.

"A lone survivor of the diluted." The thing stated. "First blood to us, Elf."

The Thalmor gurgled and unrecognizable response.

"Please, living-one, humor me before Sovngarde's judgment. Disclose HIS location, NOW."

"N-Never..." The Thalmor choked.

With a slow motion, the Draugr leaned his claw downwards, until he was eye to eye with the Elf.

"-Your answer through confused tongue is worthless..." The Elf screamed as a white light blinded Alduin for a split-second, a melding of energies that released an orb of illumination about the Draugr's head.

The lifeless Thalmor was dropped to the cobble like a ragdoll, and the lord upraised his arms.

"Brothers..." He said musingly. "-The wretched, weak, and perverted mind of a Thalmor has released to me the knowledge of their passing."

The surrounding Draugr were silent, but acknowledged without voice, other than their weapons beating on their breasts and shields.

"We strike at the eve of next cycle."

No sooner had Alduin, her eyes wide, moved to retreat back to Voss, did the lord suddenly jerk his helm upwards, piercing, blue and white eyes glaring DIRECTLY in her hiding spot.

She swore that the undead grinned even wider, before a finger raised to the thickets.

"By the very graciousness of fate! Our host! My prior barricade to the gates of kingship!" He laughed, motioning gleefully for two of his undead soldiers to move upwards, the Nordic Bows in their grasps stretching behind their hands with freshly loaded arrows.

Alduin was frozen.

How had he seen her?

The lord tapped his boot impatiently, though, never dropped his grin.

"Please dearest, Dovah. I wish to not make this..." The archers raised their lines of vision directly at the brush.

"-PAINFUL."

Alduin swallowed.

It was either risk getting hit with obviously skilled archer's ammunition, or just reveal herself.

Without a noise, the little Dragon stepped into the open, causing the reaction of the Draugr leader to clap its wrinkled hands together.

"Wisely done, World Eater! Or, should I say... Alduin?"

The Dragon stared at him with keen eyes, and sat on her haunches as he put both of his palms on the readied bows of his archers, and lowered them with dual pushes.

"W-Who are you?" She asked with a quaking tone.

"Oh, terrible of my impressions, no? My manners..." The Draugr chuckled. "I am Asylum. Warlord of the True Nine Holds."

Alduin had never heard of his title before, nor knew what he meant by TRUE Nine Holds...

She swallowed, keeping her eyes locked on his, and not the tens of tensed undead that glared daggers to her around their master.

"Well... Warlord... How do you know who I am?"

The Draugr looked comedic.

"-I have much patience, Dovah. I trust your perception to recognize the value in observation, and deceiving stereotype." He lightly said. "-I'm NOT stupid, World Eater. I know of your curse, and I know of your defeat at the hands of the Dovahkin."

He began a slow pace towards her, his massive body lumbering, not rocking, with the movements of his rusted, rune etched boots.

He stood inches before her, Alduin only matching the height of his lower thigh.

"W-what do you want?" She growled.

"Days of Skyrim, and the emptiness of Sovngarde are from this point on, numbered, my friend." Asylum said.

"Is that a threat?"

"Indirectly, Dovah. I wouldn't have hailed you had I not something of relevance to relinquish..." His knees creaked amid his leaning down, and it was at this point, that Alduin smelled the ripe stench of death and EVIL radiating off of him.

"I WILL reclaim Tamriel. Now note, my opponent, I feel... Distasteful, of unfair execution of opposition." He chuckled. "-I will not kill you this day. I have much more higher goals than the death of a former problem."

She sneered at him. She also noted her lack of defiance...

"My warning, Dovah, is simple. I'm giving you a chance. The Gods are fools, and they track not the singularity of every movement you harbor... "

By now, Alduin considered this new threat powerful, but arrogant. He was basically telling her to run while she could, and abandon Voss.

Thoughts of such actions conjured and messed in her mind, it was practically the opportunity she would have MURDERED for only days prior. But then, the visions of Voss, the new person she felt so conflicted over battered these decisions of betrayal aside.

"The Dovahkin is dead. My child, you of all should recognize that."

"You WILL NOT touch him!" She shouted.

"Hey! Alduin! You have an elephant bladder or something?"

Oh no.

She turned her head over her shoulder just in time to see Voss, the Dragonborn, freeze in awe at the army of Draugr and their freakish leader before his friend.

"Uh... Hi, guys?" He waved idiotically, and Alduin grumbled in irony.

"Your efforts of resistance are noted, World Eater." Asylum snickered, his form long beginning to liquidate back into the ground with his soldiers.

"You haven't seen my essence lastly." Those words echoed in her mind when the road became empty, save the tens of dead High Elves.

She growled in anger.

Voss took a distance to stand behind her, and he knelt as she turned to face him.

"Alduin... Who... What, was that?"

She took a moment to respond.

"He called himself... Asylum."

Voss' eyes went wide.

Within the next second, he had slung her over his shoulder, and was running at full speed to their original destination.

She bobbed with his sprinting, sighing, and leaning her head on her wrist.

Just like old times...

It was scary those old times though, were pretty recent.

-0-0-0-0-0-


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7.

Story Time!

-0-0-0-0-0-

"Me and the guy go back..."

For the last half-hour, Voss had been doing nothing but talking, cracking wise-ass jokes, or flailing his arms about amid explanation.

The Draugr Warlord, Asylum, turned out to be a pretty dangerous fellow after all, accordingly being responsible for one of the many wars that had enveloped Tamriel centuries prior. This conflict had caused a sheer overflow of destruction, death and famine.

The sentence that riddled Alduin's mind throughout the whole thing...

No WONDER this guy had anger management issues.

"So, yeah, I had battled him a LONG time ago... When I was with those funny-smelling, bearded old men!"

"You mean the Gray Beards?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah!"

She slapped a claw down her snout.

The wind seemed to flick and moan at the very news he was delivering to her, it ravaged the surrounding trees, bristling their pines and leaves in a hissing storm.

Their location, in which, she honestly couldn't have guessed to begin with, was a small well located in the hills nearby to Whiterun. Apparently, THIS was where they were originally headed.

Voss seemed to snap out of his daze, snapped his plated fingers, and snatched up a bucket by the side of the well, attaching it to the hook, and sinking it in with lowered hands.

Alduin sniffed, as if to gain his attention.

When he did nothing but sing another strange, and alien song about Waking Up Inside, she cleared her throat.

Still nothing.

"Voss?"

He bobbed his head to his singing, and began to retract the bucket.

"VOSS?"

Bringing the wooden object up, Voss slung the container over his shoulder, and went about digging in one of the pockets of his belt.

"VOSS!"

"WHAT?!" He screamed childishly, flailing his arms and leaping back in surprise. "Geez, Al'! Calm yourself!"

"You aren't phased AT ALL, of the fact the world is in peril AGAIN?!"

She really didn't figure why she cared about the world, since, only a while ago, she'd tried to eat it...

She guessed that was the OLD her... Or... Him... Whatever.

"Oh, pfft. Look, Alduin, I'm not THAT stupid!"

Suddenly, Voss came out of the pocket he'd been digging in, and held a small slip of paper with strange script adorning its girth.

Alduin nudged her head higher to view it, and realized it was Draconic.

"What are you doing-?"

"OD,"

Suddenly, the word hit her like a brick wall.

He was saying a shout.

"-DA-"

"Don't you DARE call him! NO! VOSS!"

"-VIING!"

The air vibrated, and the ground quaked, Alduin fell to her haunches, and buried her face in her claws.

"Shit..." She muttered.

"Always good to keep a sticky-note!" Voss said blindly, sticking the note back into his pocket, and folding his arms in knowing as the sounds of flapping wings began in the backdrop.

"Hey, Al'? What's wrong?"

"He's NEVER going to let me live it down, you jerk..."

"DOVAHKIN! I AM HERE!"

A massive tremor of dust erupted to their left, nearly knocking Voss on his back, and not even getting a reaction from Alduin as she dug her face deeper into her palms.

Voss brushed himself off, and smiled behind his helm at the view of a colossal, winged behemoth emerging from the smoke. Red scales and powerful muscles adorned the creature, and the Dragon looked about cautiously, before gazing at him with two, piercing yellow eyes.

"Dovahkin?" Odahviing asked with a hint of annoyance in his voice .

"WASSUP ODEY?" Voss threw his arms in the air in greeting.

For another minute, no words were exchanged as Odahviing drooped his eyelids, snorted, and cast another look around.

"Dovahkin?"

"Yeah, best friend?"

"Where are the foes?"

"What foes?"

A tiny clapping, as Odahviing slapped a wing over his face.

"I pledged loyalty to a moron..." He mumbled.

"What was that, bestest friend?"

The red Dragon removed his wing, and glared daggers at the Dragonborn.

"Nothing... FRIEND." He said the word as if it were poisonous.

Before Voss could properly respond however, Odahviing smelled something... Odd.

Now note, with the fact most of the other Dragons in the world being dead, he never really got to experience this fantastic, and surprising scent he was picking up, and it kind of made him hyper.

"I smell..." He drooled. "-Dragoness..."

"So anyway, Odey, I need you to help- Wait, HUH?" Voss interjected.

Odahviing's wild gaze spun his head to the side, where his eyes lit at the now curious Alduin, her head bolting upwards at his attention.

Odahviing made a raspy, breeze sound that one could only take as a provocative whistle, and he brushed a wing corner over the top of his head to perm nonexistent hair.

"Well, HELLO." He said huskily. "What brings a pretty one like YOU here?" He shuffled over, and laid a monstrous, larger wing over Alduin's suddenly quaking back.

She was speechless, and her jaw drooped as the larger male leaned her against him.

"Uh, Odey?" Voss held a finger up, but the Dragon didn't take notice.

"So my precious butterfly, what's your name?" He chuckled.

"-I-I... My..." She stuttered incomprehensibly.

"Oh... Is the beauty, SHY?"

"Odahviing?" Voss tried again.

"How about a kiss, my dumpling?"

"Odey?"

Alduin suddenly shrieked when his elongated, prehensile tongue slithered out of his maw, and flicked over her nose.

"Odahviing, that's Alduin."

"Pfft. Don't be ridiculous, Dovahkin..."

"GET OFF OF ME YOU GODDAMNED PERVERT!"

He looked down at the shivering, angry and quite attractive Dragoness beside him. He laughed at her hard-to-get games.

"Aw, FEISTY, are we?"

"F-feisty? FEISTY?! THIS COMING FROM THE DOUCHE WHO PEED IN THE CHANDELIERS IN SOVNGARDE?!"

Odahviing's features plummeted, and he staggered back in shock, throwing his body backwards, and curling his wings about defensively.

"How in the hell... H-How did you KNOW THAT?" He blabbered.

"OR WHEN I YELLED AT YOU FOR IT, AND YOU LAID A DAMNED TURD ON THE FLOOR IN RESPONSE?!"

The normally red Dragon was even redder as the little female jabbed a nail in his direction.

"-YEAH, MISTER HOT-STUFF! GO ON! REACH HOME BASE WITH THIS THROW!" Alduin was on overdrive, and promptly took hold of a discarded stone on the dirt below her, and swung her arm.

A second later, and Odahviing grimaced as it bounced with a thud off of his nose, and he yipped, grabbing hold of his snout tenderly.

For a long moment, Voss watched this unfold with a broadening smile, only now being noticed by the two awkward-feeling Dragons.

Finally, Alduin stood from her shivering haunches, and stepped behind the Dragonborn, gazing at her once second-in-command with a look of disgust.

Finally, Voss let an outburst breach him.

"AW MAN, Odey! You just got SERVED!"

Metaphorically speaking, Voss jabbed his thumbs downwards in a "Awesome-Sauce" appearance, as he would dub later, but clearly, both other creatures took as it as nothing more than sure signs of a diagnosis.

Odahviing blinked, and suddenly remembered he had almost MADE-OUT with... Well... Alduin.

"GODS! CLEANSE ME!" He screamed, flailing his tongue from its hold within his chops, and rapidly running his palms down its girth, making gagging noises as he did so.

Alduin turned a bright shade, and grumbled something along the lines of lack-of-bodily control.

Voss just snatched up his bucket, stepped over to Odahviing, and slung the rope it was strapped too over his neck, emitting a pained gasp from him as he fell to the ground with a hurried blast of dust from the weight.

"-Alrighty, Odey, I need you to carry that for me!" Voss stated matter-of-factly. Odahviing groaned in torture, his tongue trailing on the ground.

"Well, best we be off! TALLY-HO!" Voss cried in a strange, raspy accent, and ran down the road with his finger in the air.

Eventually, the jubilant proclamations of epic-exploration and lack of underwear faded, and Alduin stole a pitying glance at Odahviing, whom stood shakily, and gazed at her with a hint of disgust, and apologetic sense.

"Is... Is it really YOU, Alduin?"

"No shit." She grumbled.

"I'm... Sorry-"

"Damn straight you are! Try another stunt like that with me, and I'll tear your nuts out your backside."

-0-0-0-0-0-

The road seemed to stretch on forever, Odahviing felt, a never-ending expanse in which he was weighted down by the accursed bucket over his neck, and forced to not only trek besides his former master and apparent false love-interest, but also...

The torrent of songs, nonsense, and utter garbage that flowed from within the Dragonborn's helmet...

"-And so then, I looked at this chick, and I said, 'Damn girl! Get a hairjob!' and the next day, she showed up from the GROOMERS! I mean, how stupid can a Khajit get?!"

Voss almost collapsed into a laughing fit, stumbling amid his walk, and earning a smile on Alduin's part, which only made Odahviing bring himself to near tears.

Why had the gods cursed him so?

"Aw man, this is GREAT!" Voss clapped his hands. "Just walking with my two Dragon friends! Hell yeah!"

Odahviing leaned closer to Alduin.

"What HAPPENED to you?"

"The gods cursed me." She snapped.

"How?"

"How do you THINK?"

"Well... You look femal-"

Voss interjected with a cough.

"Its simple enough," He began. "-They gave her sweatermuffins!"

Alduin snarled, and covered her breasts with her right wing, earning a repulsed glance from Odahviing. So far on their walk back to Voss' house, they had encountered no one on the journey.

"Say, Odey?"

"What?" Was all the mighty red Dragon uttered.

"What have you been up too lately?"

He really didn't know how to respond to the Dovahkin's question. He rolled his shoulders under the duress of the bucket, and bore his teeth slightly.

"The Throat of the World..." He stated.

"How's Paarthurnax?" Voss asked.

"Old..."

"Quick question, how long is his beard?"

Alduin looked at him keenly, and so did Odahviing before the red Dragon answered.

"Long?" He tried.

Voss stopped dead, arms falling to his sides loosely. He sniffed, and dug into his pockets, eventually retrieving a series of gold-coins as his companions observed curiously.

With a small handful of money in his right gauntlet, Voss muttered something unintelligent, and handed the money in a pouting shove in Odahviing's direction.

He raised an eye ridge, and didn't take the offering.

"Voss? What are you doing?" Alduin asked.

"I lost my bet damn it..." He grumbled.

"What bet?"

"I said I'd give him twenty coins if he actually re-grew his beard... Though, I guess it was worth it since the last one."

Odahviing took the money lightly, and stuffed it under a scale at his side.

"I was wondering where his hair went last time..." He quizzed to himself, though, Voss saw it good enough to respond with the answer either way.

"I poured pink nail-polish in it while he was sleeping!" He said gleefully, the same style as a small child would announce winning a prize.

Despite Alduin not being evil anymore, she still felt a hint of satisfaction at her former second-in-command during the wars on humanity, and his predicament.

"I'll tell you, I've never heard someone so old, scream like such a girl in the morning!" The Dragonborn continued.

"It was a piercing kind of scream, you know, like when you stub your toe at night to get up for the bathroom, and you think its a monster from a nightmare you were having!"

Both of the Dragons glared like he was a maniac, which, much to Alduin's annoyance, he probably was. Soon after, the road continued, and Voss continued on with the uncomfortable converse, beginning a rant on something they hadn't even heard of in their ancient existences...

Besides, who other than the Dovahkin would know what the hell 'DLC' was anyway?

Alduin listened more than Odahviing, who did his best to tune his 'Friend' out, while, at the same time, attempted to scourge his head of the simple, disturbing tidbit here...

And that tidbit was Alduin actually giving a HOOT about what the human was saying.

Looking over at him... Her... Whatever, Odahviing clearly saw a strange and alien spark in the Dragon's eyes as she stared at Voss, it was something he hadn't seen in millennia among his kind, and it frightened him.

"Alduin," He snorted, earning the female's gaze, and nothing from the arm-flailing Voss who now spoke quite angrily about the superiority of an unknown type of disk over a 'Torrent' once again, whatever in lord's name that meant...

"What?" She asked.

"What ARE you doing?" He motioned his head to the Dragonborn.

She followed his gaze, and then his eyes falling back on her. She turned a bright shade of red, and averted her shut eyes.

"None of your concern..." She snapped.

"-Even I know this curse is no coincidence. Don't you remember the saying? The laced-in myth among those words, Alduin?"

Her mind suddenly flashed.

How, how in god's names had she forgotten? It was all suddenly clear to her...

Years, centuries ago, when she and her army, her prior self had come across the ancient knowledge hidden within the side-script of a long destroyed scroll, she had made no sense of it until a much later age...

And now, the pieces were coming together.

"_Ruler and Consumer, doomed to shift in ways more of one." _

She recalled the text perfectly.

"_Ruler and Consumer, Dovah and Immortal, shunned by kin and gods. Organs shift and visions change, to the adoration of oblivion, an unknowing man." _

She quaked.

That Elder Scroll was never foretold among the many said to exist, and when she had had it destroyed, she never realized what the tome meant...

Ruler and Consumer, Dovah and Immortal...

She was known as the World Eater, and was both of those things, a Dragon and un-aging...

Organs shift and Visions change...

She sure didn't think or look the same as before now...

The Adoration of Oblivion, an Unknowing Man...

Oh gods...

Alduin stared at Voss as he continued talking, his words a giant blur to her hearing, she never even noticed him scratch the plating by his backside.

His was oblivious to her fondness... And unknowing... And, he was a man...

"Crap..." She uttered.

"-Alduin, we should never have destroyed that tome. Look at what has happened." Odahviing hissed. "-My ways of evil are done, and yours seem to have faded as well, but this is no accident or last-second decision of the gods."

Alduin quickened her walk, trying to get closer to the Dragonborn.

"Alduin, no..." Odahviing said. "-If you walk away from this now, you will NEVER by relieved of your curse!"

She refused to except it, and thus, continued her stare at the Dragonborn, and stepped in line beside him.

Odahviing shut his eyes.

He couldn't get through to her...

"Hey, I found him!" Voss cheered, yanking out a dead, and partially dismembered Dragonfly from his pocket. The Blue Dartwing looked utterly sad, and flopped against the side of his hand as he clutched it.

"I found Timothy!"

Alduin didn't take notice, and Odahviing cocked his head.

"You named a corpse?"

"Corpse? Pfft! Pee-shaw, Odey! Tim's good as new-!"

Alduin in her confused state, needed quiet, and snatched the dead insect from Voss' hand with a quick flick of her wing. She tossed it in front of her, where her front claw crushed it into a dried pile of exo-skeletal debris.

She kept on moving, head down, and Voss stopped dead, staring down at the mess.

Odahviing growled, and hurried to catch up with Alduin.

Soon, twin clangs were heard as the Dragonborn fell to his plated knees, through his fists in the air, and shoved his helm to view the sky.

"TIIIIMMMMOOOOTTHHHYYYY!" He screamed.

-0-0-0-0-0-


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8.

A New Day, a New Threat List.

-0-0-0-0-0-

For the longest of times, Voss assumed the behavior out of boredom, perhaps the generalized feeling of annoyance and agitation that, despite his seemingly aloof sense of reality, he KNEW was common for her.

At least, that was when SHE was a HE.

But hey, who in the gods' was he to judge if her new feminine traits weren't hampered by old wounds?

It was kind of like asking, 'How did that sword wound heal? Sideways? Or crooked?' It was kind of pointless to debate.

Voss just kind of walked and said nothing, Alduin trailing in front of him, head lowered, tail nearly pulling between her legs.

Odahviing had even gone quiet, lugging the Dragonborn's bucket silently.

Finally, Voss decided to end the silence.

"Anybody here like eggrolls?"

Alduin either hadn't heard him through her strong emotions, ignored, or just didn't care enough to pay attention around her, and Odahviing simply stared.

"-Jeez, Chaurus got your tongues?" He laughed. The man's head whipped behind him, to gaze at Odahviing with sudden vigor.

"Hey! Odey!"

"What?"

"-WASSUP?!"

The Dragon just gawked.

"Was, up? What, WAS, up, Dovahkin?"

Voss just sniffed and turned back to Alduin.

"Hey, hey, Al'?"

Nothing.

"Alduin?"

The Dragoness was visibly tensing.

"Al'? Alduin? Hey, hey Alduin?"

A pebble bounced off a scale on the back of her neck. The wave of obscurity that blinded her from the rest of the world began to fade.

"Al'?"

She heard him rustle a pouch on his armor, and a second later, a light clack was heard on the back of her head, and a dirtied, dust-covered peanut landed on the road beside her.

"Alduin?"

The Dragoness stopped dead, and ushered a stumbling halt on Voss' part. He tilted his head in curiosity, as she spun to glare fire over her left wing and shoulder.

Her teeth was bore, and she sneered.

"WHAT?"

Voss scratched ineffectively at the armor covering his backside again, and waved his hand absentmindedly.

"Hi!"

Alduin was never NOT astonished at the unknowing, oblivious, AUDACITY of the Dragonborn.

She blinked.

"Shut up."

"Aw man, Al'! You had an awesome streak of niceness, and now you just crashed the plane!"

She lifted an eye-ridge.

"A 'Plane'?"

"Yeah! You know-"

He made a terrible screeching sound, acute to a steel flap diving through the air, with his mouth inside his helm.

"-Is that a mating call?" Odahviing asked a bit too seriously.

Voss glanced at both of the Dragons, coughed, and cleared his throat.

"You guys need to get out more."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Eventually, on the way to Whiterun, Voss began to sing...

AGAIN.

Alduin wished she had extra claws to cup over her hearing slits on the sides of her head, and used her wing-tips to unsuccessfully blotch out the horrific lyrics...

And by the lords of Skyrim... It sounded like an elk was being brutally murdered.

"-I NEVER SAW IT COMING, SHOULD OF STARTED RUNNING-" He threw his arms in the air. "-A LONG LONG TIME AGOOOO!"

Alduin's eye twitched, and Odahviing had begun to quake amid his walk.

"-AND I'M BETTER OFF WITHOUT YOU! MORE THAN YOU, MORE THAN YOU KNOW!"

He began to drive a strange symbol with his hand, one that involved his pinky, point, and thumb fingers above his head.

"AND THE DAY I THOUGHT I'D NEVER GET THROUGH..."

Alduin snarled.

"-I GOT OVER YOOOOUUUUU!"

Finally, after nearly twenty minutes of NONE STOP vocals, the freak had quieted himself.

Odahviing visibly lost muscular tension, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Voss rubbed an itch on his neck crease of his helm, and without warning...

"-HEY NOW, YOUR AN ALL-STAR!"

Alduin stopped short.

Now to put that she was loud was an understatement, because, as much as the little Dragoness would never admit it...

She reared her head back, and SCREAMED.

"VOSS! SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Odahviing suffered a brief moment of after-tremors, and Voss just stood there looking at her.

By this point in the day, it was mid-afternoon, the sun was directly above them, and strings of white clouds wired about. So naturally, Alduin's facial rage was easily seen.

"B-But... I like that song..."

"I DON'T CARE! STOP! BEFORE I HURT YOU!"

Voss waved his hand dismissively.

"Pfft... You wouldn't do THAT. And I likewise."

She groaned with ironic anger, and began to walk again.

"STOP! In the name of the Jarl!"

Voss' reaction was almost immediate, and his gauntlet slapped to the forehead of his helm with an audible clang.

"Aw poop... Not HIM again..."

Running in a sprint down the road was a Whiterun-uniformed Guard, his sword drawn, and shield brandished, he stopped before the Dragonborn, gazed once at Alduin (She was apparently the latest news in the city) and jabbed a finger from the handle of his weapon.

"You have committed-"

"-CRIMES AGAINST SKYRIM AND HER PEOPLE! Blah blah blah, you know what, Bill? Hold the diluted accented statement, and say the charges."

Alduin watched this scene with a raised brow, and Odahviing, still unseen by the oblivious guard, just narrowed his eyes and watched with interest.

The guard shifted on his feet, not stowing his weapons.

"That's OFFICER, Bill to you, Dragonborn. The Jarl has ordered your arrest for the theft of a item."

"AGAIN?!" Voss barked.

The Dragonborn pointed a plated finger in Officer Bill's face faster than he swung his Ebony Hammer.

"GET THIS, YOU FAT MALL-COP!" He barked. "-I AM NOT GOING THROUGH THIS AGAIN! We are NOT repeating the LAST attempted arrest!"

"Last, attempted?" Bill stuttered, shocked.

Voss growled.

"You REALLY, don't remember?"

Bill genuinely shook his head, sword lowering slightly.

"You. Tried. To Arrest Me. For. A. FORK." He folded his arms. "I didn't even realize I'd taken it..."

Bill's helm tilted upwards in remembrance.

"Oh yeah..."

"So, what is it THIS time?"

The guard that apparently had a history with the Dragonborn, raised his weapons once more.

"-The Mailing Office has reported a stolen product."

Voss almost twitched, like an electrocuted squirrel on a power-line. He looked at Alduin keenly. Then, he stared back to Officer Bill.

"-A envelope this time?"

"Dragonborn, I will not ask again, come quietly, or-"

_WHAM!_

Bill toppled like a loose pile of bricks, his form collapsing in a heap on the road, sword flying from his grasp, and shield rolling like a wagon wheel into a nearby tree.

Alduin felt her jaw drop at Voss' sucker-punch, and Odahviing raised his lower-lip, impressed.

Voss sniffed, bent, and yanked a handful of gold from Bill's uniform, patted the helmet with pity, and stepped over the knocked-out guard with a slight stride.

"That's what taking a job to seriously will do to you! You both coming?"

Alduin and Odahviing glanced at each other, and carefully walked around Bill's body, and Alduin clearly noted how his leg twitched, like a severed insect limb.

They reached the gates of Whiterun faster than usual, and only a few hours after, when darkness had fell, did a dirtied, uniform-ruffled Officer Bill return to the guard's barracks, a hand over his aching, helmed head, and a limp in his walk.

Two other guards stared as he stumbled in the door, and one of them finished chewing his sweet-roll, before stating matter-of-factly.

"Don't even BOTHER with him, man."

Bill just nodded weakly.

"-Hey, just be grateful you didn't end up like Hank! The Dragonborn used an oven-bread stick!" The other grunted.

Bill remembered that too, similarly to his prior arrest attempt on Voss... And indeed, the former recruit, Hank, would never be able to sit properly again...

-0-0-0-0-0-

Odahviing dropped the bucket inside the Breezhome, gave a sorrowful look to Alduin, and left.

He flew away silently, perturbed and bothered by the day's events, he vanished in the night towards the Throat of the World.

Voss waved to him goodbye, ignoring the several citizens that watched him from their hiding places like he was a lunatic.

"BYE BESTEST FRIEND!" He cried.

Alduin sulked, and stepped into the ajar door to the house quietly. It took Voss a second to realize this, before he followed in suit.

When he went to address her, she was already halfway up the stairs to his room, and a moment later, he heard his bed creak with her weight.

He exhaled, and sat on the second chair by the fire-pit in the center of the lobby.

For a long time, his prior behavior had vanished, and was replaced by a fresh amount of pondering. Possibly, out of all this, Alduin had changed for the better, and it was unfortunate, that his inability to accept her basic advances, was creating such a miserable situation for her.

But something told him, that there was another subject stacking that.

He stood, and dropped his helm on the chair, went up the steps, and quietly walked across his room to the curled, and silent Dragoness in his bed,

"Al'..."

She said nothing.

"I know your awake."

"Go away..."

"I want to talk about it."

She balled in on herself tighter.

"Its not just my caution, is it?"

For a period of minutes she didn't respond, and then, like a unsuspected tidal wave, she emerged from the ocean of doubt.

"I... Remembered something..."

-0-0-0-0-0-

She never had to dig so far in her memory before. Even during the final battle with the EXACT same one she poured these emotions too, Alduin had never experienced such reminiscence when she recalled devastating shouts to attempt to kill Voss…

Now, with the story complete, the revelation of a long burned, strange and apparently future-telling Elder Scroll being known to the Dragonborn, he simply mulled.

Sitting on the edge of his own sleeping material, he stared at the Dragon with pondering thought, and albeit, he was no less bothered as he was interested.

Voss couldn't say he held these kinds of feelings for his old rival, but, he did quite begin to wonder exactly how long that would last.

It was an entire situation of coming to terms with himself, and by the gods as his witnesses, he couldn't seem to do it.

"What do you think?" Alduin sounded soft, and blinked at him.

He was silent, but then, quickly, he broke it.

"You know, I'm not sure…"

"I can understand…"

"Alduin, as traumatic as your experience has been, you have to get that this isn't easy for me either. I mean, you were trying to EAT the world not-so-long ago..."

The little Dragon shut her eyes in slight pained thought. Voss rubbed his chin, his bare skin making a sifting noise as he scratched.

"Well, Al'... I'm sticking through it with you." He stated rather blandly.

Alduin's eyes perked, and she stared in wonder at this man, the Dragoborn, the same that had switched from desiring her destruction to save the universe, to befriending a changed being. The same that had just offered to be by her side throughout this ordeal...

She smiled with sad happiness.

"-I can't say I can overcome my own problems yet, but, hey, what are friends for, huh?"

He held out his fist to the pleased, content Dragoness.

"Buddies?"

Alduin heard the word leave her before she realized it, and was quite glad that it happened with her permission to her body.

She pressed her balled claw to his own knuckles, and leaned in close.

"Buddies." She smiled.

All the while, the Blue Sapphire was tightly clenched in her other claw, hidden by the furs of the bed. Alduin also felt a feeling of paper there as well, and laughed with Voss when he heard it crunch.

Stupid envelopes...

-0-0-0-0-0-


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9.

Rangers and Draugr and Dragons!.

-0-0-0-0-0-

It was perhaps two-o-clock in the morning, fairly damp and dark outside, and arguably one of the most grim days experienced by the inhabitants of Skyrim, weather-wise, in a long time.

Rain poured in a downfall of torrential mist and volume that left trees, thicket, ground and road alike drenched utterly.

It fell in such amount, that the noises coming from outside were acute to the god's jabbing a middle-digit at the sleepy world, and then dumping a full bathtub on it with a wicked grin, while holding a active smart-device.

It was unfortunate, that Voss, as he thought this, didn't know what a 'Smart-Device' was...

Man, his mind came up with some weird-ass stuff.

His arms stretched from his position amid the sheets of his mattress, and he cast aside the furs with a jerked wrist. The chamber was dark, and rain pounded the roof above his head in a muffled battering.

He yawned, loudly, and immediately regretted doing so.

A claw whipped into his vision faster than he could really process, and clenched about his lower jaw with a THWACK! like sound. He was still, eyes suddenly bulging, before a tiny click of his teeth colliding followed, and the palm retracted from his shut mouth.

"-If you make another damned noise... I'll wet your bed on PURPOSE..."

He looked down at the lump of sheets next to him, and frowned in sudden panic at the tired female voice that had come from it.

Oh, that's right.

Apparently Alduin was sharing his bed from now on.

He shrugged, and quietly stood to cross his room to the stairs.

At the lower level, despite such distance, he could hear the little Dragon begin to snore again, and he snorted absently. He snatched up a cup of fruit juice, and plopped down into the left chair by the unlit fire-pit.

The mental processes flowing began to emanate around Alduin's next step in the relationship ladder with him, which now involved not only sharing his bed, but... For Talos' sake...

The frigging Dragon had SPOONED him.

In the middle of the night, the abrupt, sharp and obnoxious snoring Alduin apparently had an adept talent at performing, had been discovered by the startled Voss, as, he had never really slept next to her before.

When the explosive intakes and exhales of air had come to a halt, his bloodshot eyes immediately smashed his mind with phrases of- 'ITS STOPPED! NOW! DO IT NOW!' before crashing shut.

The peace lasted maybe a minute, and then he had... Felt it.

At first, it was an arm draping over his chest, and that didn't really bother him. Than the other snaked beneath his back, and pulled him closer to her, his eyes were HALF-OPEN by that point, and he still could have shouldered it, and fell asleep.

It was when Alduin's thick, shapely female thigh fell over his hips, and her tail coiled over that, did the scene become, bluntly...

DAMN CREEPY.

The only good thing was, she had stopped snoring.

The resulting nightmares in his following sleep were probably the strangest he'd ever had. And that was saying something, seeing as when he was a child, there was once a dream of a walking sugar-cookie that screamed obscenities about the tyranny of ovens from an unseen mouth.

Voss never forgave his mind for that one, and he was pretty sure he wouldn't let these nightly visions slide easily either.

The Dragonborn had stared at the wall throughout this, and never noticed the exact cause of such trivialities walking down the staircase groggily, grab a mug of juice he'd left on the table, and curl up in the chair next to his.

"What's got you so zombie-like?" She muttered.

His head jerked in her direction, and he just raised a brow.

"Dang, Al', you sure are confusing, in sound I mean."

She looked at him funny, and blinked more sleep from her eyes.

"Huh?"

"It was like I was next to an active lawnmower all night! And then, your quieter than a mouse coming down the stairs..." He jabbed a finger. "-I hope you realize how screwed up that is."

-0-0-0-0-0-

It was at the subsequent passing of the next hour that the rain subsided slightly, if only enough, for it to be considered a difference.

With all of the natural commotion, nobody, not even the guards that stood slumped amid the downpour, even heard the strange noise.

Out of the tower's recesses, and SOAKED to his undershirt beneath the uniform, the Whiterun soldier snorted in anger, and feebly wiped water from his drenched helm.

Beside him, another of his rank, garbed identical to him, and wearing a medical neck-brace around the lip of his headgear, finally decided the silence had been long enough.

"S-So..." He shivered, receiving no reaction whatsoever from the other man.

"-What's u-up?"

The sight of the other guard going completely rigid, his shoulders stiffening, and his head spiraling with the slowest of movements to face his injured comrade, was possibly the most intimidating view of the evening.

"Say that again." His voice was dangerously raspy.

The other adjusted his neck-brace, and cleared his throat.

"-I-I said-"

"I KNOW what you said. Don't do it again. Or you'll shit your own teeth tonight."

With that, the twin sentries went back to that same silence, albeit with an added aura of grimness.

"W-Where's Ranch? I still need to get him back for throwing me down those damned stairs..."

"Probably still sleeping-"

The man might have finished his sentence, had a dislodged, filthy, and grime-covered boot not released a clank of metallic contact from the back of his head.

"OI! SHUT YER MOUTH! Can't dream 'bout tractors with your friggin' gob goin'!"

No sooner had the redneck shouted from his bed-ridden state, did the shifting of blankets emit, and the sound of unhealthy snoring followed.

The impacted guard rubbed his helm, and folded his arms.

"If you promise to shut up, I'll agree to help you in revenge." He relented.

"Really?"

"Yep. I'm done."

"HELL-YEA-!"

The neck-brace failed to even stop the next object that hurled with a bit too-much accuracy from the tower's doorway. The loudest bang of steel, and the clothes-iron had rendered the guard out like a light.

He fell to the top of the stairs, and the iron smacked beside him.

"I SAID SHUT UP!"

Ranch was back asleep, and the only conscious soldier growled, before dragging the body of his friend to the medical station for the second time. As prior mentioned, amid the antics, nobody at the tower saw the strange bubbling, liquid shadow that formulated back to the earth next to the stairs.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Deep in the bowels of the hellish existence he had known for so long, yet had been away from longer, the sky was no longer natural, nor was it seen. The space above his head was little more than a blackened void of nothing, that hung like a impending evil over the geography below it.

Mountains upon mountains of the same, long exhausted metal that was used to craft ancient nordic armor and weapons, material that nations would war for, shadowed the horizon in every direction.

Among them, the large, expansive valleys with floors of dark soil held massive nord shrines, gigantic statues, cathedrals, and arena-like structures that all praised worship to long-dead deities.

However, out of all the clearings, the one that stood direct center of this eternal night-gripped world, a towering fortress of tens of spires, burial towers, rounded fortifications, and bristling with cross-bow installations and cannons, burst out of the crag-laden ground like a impaling spear.

Its girth was riddled with amber hued windows and archer slots, torches with blue fire ringed its base and tops.

The citadel cluster was impenetrable, and untouchable by any army save his own.

Asylum trekked through one of the many catacombs wordlessly, all the while, gazing forlornly at rows of coffins, burial slots, and trinkets left for the dead. It was a lonely notion, all of it.

Even after so long of absence from his own palace, Asylum could recall every detail of this specific catacomb alone, and ten times more for the whole fortress. With such a keen understanding of practically every tidbit of information around him, the ambience of deathly growls, light-stumbling footfalls of patrols, none of it was alien to him.

This was his realm, his WORLD, and he had created it for this exact feeling of stability.

One day, one of the blasted days that passed in the mortal and godly existences, not only would Tamriel suffer acute, but the very domains of IMMORTALITY would be thrown to the undead.

Whether anyone accepted this or not was irrelevant.

All that mattered was how fast his endless numbers of Draugr could overwhelm them.

"To the fickle hands of fate and beyond..." He mused, taking a grouping of steps to gaze into the darkened remains of a burial slot at his left.

The Draugr corpse inside was long rotted to lack of recognition, but he smiled with his ugly, stinking maw in admiration either way.

"Apparently, not even the DOMINANT ones escape retribution."

No question was intended, but rather a self-chastising statement.

Asylum rapped his knuckle to the stone that incased the slot, and stomped down the remainder of the hall, covering the distance to a set of nordic-carved metal doors, that swung aside under a quickened push from his rotted palms.

To the other side, darkness was quick to blacken his vision of the internal coffin-spire, a literal underground basement tower that was dug in a rough cigar shape beneath the earth of the fouled realm.

He extended his arms to the shadows that concealed him from sight, the serrated blade at his hip rattling against the armor it was strapped too.

For once, in a long era of time, he felt at peace.

Asylum was HOME.

It took twenty seconds, and yes, he COUNTED, for the prior obscured walls of the tower to erupt in a thousand cries of rasped vocals, innumerable blue-hued orbs now patterned the dark.

The eyes of his newest wave and additions fell on him en masse, and he released a sound, that would have chilled the bones of the strongest, and bravest of heroes.

From outside of the fortress cluster, it was no myth that the bellowing cackle of Asylum's laughter could be discerned among the mountains that encased. The undead lord filled himself with a boasting pride as he stepped back into the light of the halls behind, hundreds of shuffling shapes emerging from the wispy shadow to his rear.

"My lord..."

Asylum surely had ego, and when it was faltered, if only for a moment, he felt murderous.

The Draugr warrior before him shown the observations of such knowledge, and bowed his head to the point of jabbing his chin to the dusty ground below.

The leader was silent, he gave no indication besides the obvious to continue.

"-They have no idea. Skyrim's people are oblivious, so say the accounts of all combing parties."

Ah, good news.

That was the only excuse for such interruption, and Asylum reacted accordingly.

He was silent.

No laughter, no balling cackles. He let the foulest grin spread across his gnarled, dead face. He stepped onwards, and the scout remained bowed until he passed, and was assimilated into the thousands of stumbling bodies that followed his lord.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Amid the sounds of rain beating his house to a wet pulp outside, Voss hadn't been too keen on leaving the place.

It was much related to the instance of one refusing to take a dunk in the freezing cold ocean, when you wore only a speedo. Much as he regretted admitting it, armor, of all things, was quite like wearing a thong among plummeting weather.

The metals reacted quite badly to the sub-zero temperatures, and acted as near ice-packs on the body.

If it weren't for the fact he had some semblance of knowledge with spell casting, and gave himself a low-dose of fire-casting beneath the ebony plate, Voss would most likely be lacking family-jewels at the moment.

"-Can't have a good manly existence without balls!" He said to himself with a raised finger.

Not only were the streets of Whiterun completely desolate, but on top of that, the rain had PICKED UP.

Voss growled when a particularly large globule of water cascaded down his helm's face. So, he figured, the God's not only threw Alduin at him as both a smaller, feeble version of his prior self, but also, as a GIRL, but NOW, they were dumping an ocean on him?

And to think, he had SUPPORTED that back-stabbing oaf named Talos...

With a grunt, he looked up at the sky amid his walk to the shopping area of Whiterun.

"-Look, bud, I got no quarrel with any of your deity friends up there, so for lords' sake, throw me a BONE!"

It was true, Alduin wasn't the only one confused throughout this whole ordeal.

Voss huffed at the mocking silence, and pressed forwards.

Speaking of the gender-bending little Dragoness...

Gee, were his thoughts on her quite hazed.

Her quite obvious affections for him, to be truthful, were spinning his head. What exactly had possessed the World Eater to suddenly drop EVERYTHING they once held sacred, and suddenly want to bear some guy's babies?

Alright, well, he wasn't so sure Alduin wanted him to get her pregnant, that was just a cracked joke to get his point across to himself, but, Voss was pretty confident with the way the Dragon had been eyeing his exposed flesh, she wouldn't mind a little fooling around from him.

Maybe if he just threw his arms up in the air, promptly screamed 'SCREW LOGIC!" and began to make out with his former villain, the experience would be awesome enough to put aside his blasted thoughts...

Perhaps he shouldn't SLAY Alduin, and just LA-

"You know what?" Voss grumbled to himself. "-YOU need to stop! I still haven't forgotten about that damned, talking Sugar-Cookie..."

But who wouldn't agree that a rampaging pastry that could talk from an unseen mouth would give these schleps of Skyrim something to think about?

"-That's beside the point!"

Is it giving YOU something to think about?

"-Well, yeah, I mean a sentient sweet would be enough to piss off Tamriel's-"

PRECISELY. Now, hear me out, pooka, what exactly is holding you back from gaining something you have longed for ever since the world found out you were the Dragonborn?

"-A lot of stuff. Al' WAS a guy at some point..."

If you heard that there was the most delicious bar of chocolate in the world inside your basement, and when you found it, it was dirtier than an old-woman's bunions, and you WASHED it, and got all the crap off of it, your telling me, you WOULDN'T eat it?

"Well... I mean, it is CHOCOLATE-"

So there used to be a cloggin-schlogger between Al's legs, but there isn't anymore...

"-What are you getting at, myself?"

You seriously would avoid going bump-bump with those scaly hips because of stuff that ain't there anymore?

"-Hey! THAT'S not fair!"

Reverse-psychology, buddy. Much related to karma. Believe me, their sisters.

"-What in HELL'S name do THEY have to do with this? How do you know their sisters?"

They both bite back like a bitch.

"Good point."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Through the haze of rain, Voss could never have hoped to decipher the forms of five fully armored men trailing him through the alleys of Whiterun's homes.

Clad in their golden and glass plate, the Thalmor were all but invisible to the empty streets that harbored their target.

Not only did the weather hide them in ways of visibility, but the noise drowned them out as well.

The stretching of master-woven quivers cracked and ground in the air as five, Elven crafted arrow-heads were drawn back, their noses jabbed in the direction of Voss' Ebony plate.

A smile flicked on each High one's lips, and with a tentative flick of their wrists, the arrows flew with speed.

-0-0-0-0-0-


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10.

I Used to be an Adventurer like you...

-0-0-0-0-0-

Alduin's eyes roamed about the house she had been left to linger in, and immediately, a deep, previously unrecognized longing built in her system.

Over the course of time she had returned to the world, the feelings of loneliness had subsided, and she had grown used to being around someone once more, but now, that the Dovahkin had become trusting of her, he allowed her to reign in his home...

Alone.

Alduin sulked on the same chair by the unlit fire-pit, glancing aimlessly at the door in the front of the house.

She was practically ready to begin yipping with excitement when it opened to reveal the comedic laughter of Voss, and his sopping wet armor.

However, minutes turned to a long hour, and that turned to another half-hour on top.

She had long begun to raise her head, and eye now NOTHING but the door, and that too only allowed her to worry more, and her mind to wander.

Voss technically hadn't announced any reciprocation of her emotions to him, he had so far merely let the Dragoness amplify them to him in hopes of turning him over. Alduin had never even realized she had acted so... Provocatively, during the night.

When Voss had told her, the sides of her snout had turned beat red, further magnifying the fact she was TRULY female now, and he was the one of all males to cause her to blush so hardly all the time.

She was redder than a cherry candy NOW to be exact, and she bowed her head despite the fact no one else was in the building.

So, when the next hour passed, all she could do was fail to climb the hill of her fear of simply walking about the settlement to find the Dovahkin, and just tell him what she felt.

But, what Alduin couldn't pinpoint, was if she was merely attracted to him in body, or, if the other extreme had come to play.

Surely, she was quite fixated on wanting to be closer to him more physically, there was NO question on that.

She could not, though, find the answer to the burning question within her tortured Draconic mind...

And that question was if she had become smitten with the goofy, benevolent, skilled and powerful oaf she had come to know as the Dovahkin...

Well, it seemed recently anyway, that even what she ADDRESSED him as had changed too...

Alduin never found the answer that evening if she loved Voss.

-0-0-0-0-0-

The inside of the store was briefly revealed, the door swinging open slightly to show the interior of Belethor's General Goods.

Voss was about to greet the creepily smiling clerk, Belethor himself, when he heard it.

No, it wasn't the squishy sound of Belethor taking a fearful dump in his pants, THAT could have been heard a MILE away.

Nay, it was the whizzing of parting air.

Like something was cutting through it, towards him.

Voss threw his head to the side, his ducking evolving to a panicked summer-salt behind a nearby barrel, and the cracking of impacted wood only proved it further.

The hinge to the store, and the door itself, were laden with five golden-colored arrows, that, much to his displeasure, had imbedded half of their freaking lengths into the frames.

Upon a squint through the slots of his helm, Voss deduced the munitions were indeed Elven...

"-Freaking supremacist horse-rectums!" He barked, not minding Belethor's womanly shriek within the shop as he ducked behind the counter, and yanking the Ebony Warhammer from his back.

The figures were quite fast, and slipped back to the shadows quicker than he could process the entirety of their forms. One thing was for certain, however, and that was, that his attackers were wearing Elven and glass armor, and they were undoubtedly Thalmor.

Another arrow whizzed beside his head just as he jerked it to the left to dodge.

He ran at the alley it had come from, the hammer following his swinging arms to catch the Elf around the corner of the house he hid behind.

The Ebony weapon met the wall of the building instead, kicking up a tiny cloud of smashed wood and plaster.

His intended target finished its bow beneath the weapon's head, and tackled Voss without much hassle.

The two combatants tumbled to the street, and Voss snatched hold of the man's head, much too fast for the Thalmor to compensate.

"-This bone's connected to the-"

SNAP.

The Elf's head angled awkwardly, and Voss shrugged the corpse off.

"-DUNCE BONE!"

Another of arrows flew from the darkness again, and Voss barely rolled sideways to emit clatters of the golden heads skittering about the cobblestone of the street.

He leapt for his hammer again, and didn't hear the clank of crushing Ebony until after he had yanked the weapon upwards, and brandished it to two encroaching enemies.

That clank didn't sound good, and he had to disregard it as the Thalmor assassins swung two slender, Elven swords to him, and they were slapped aside by the flanks of the hammer's head.

"-Rangers..." Was all Voss muttered, before one his wouldbe foes lost his head to the sharp point of the swinging Ebony.

The other returned with blade, only to lose his wrist to the parrying move from Voss, and then choke on his own blood from the hammer digging into his gut.

The dead Thalmor was removed with a lash of his boot, and another shriek of Ebony was heard.

Voss ignored it, and ran into the junction between the alchemy and tavern buildings were the last sets of arrows emerged from.

As he neared, yet ANOTHER shriek of tortured metal, and a sudden jerk in his right shoulder. Voss endured, and sliced a Ranger in-half who stood out in the open.

No sooner had the body dropped in its twos, did he finally realize what those horrid reports of Ebony were.

A similar noise of cracked Ebony, and Voss felt his body surge forwards from behind.

Only now, did the pain set in.

Voss hadn't been hit by a blow in a LONG time, after all, when you reached a certain point of awesomeness in both armor, magic, and weapons as he had, you tended to avoid getting hurt a lot.

It was kind of like shooting at a Dwarven Centurion with a wooden slingshot. It tended to just end badly for the attacking party.

Badly as in your head got ripped off, and a torrent of obscene mockeries and insults to your female parent were the last things your disembodied noggin heard before it and you body fell a final time.

And yes, when it came to the result of pissing off a Centurion, OR Voss, it had a similar result.

Just... The damned robot would know what a mother was...

So, that was on Voss.

Teehee.

When he looked down to his breastplate, and gazed a few seconds longer than anticipated at the twin arrow-ends that jutted from the blood-spattered armor a bit deeper than for comfort.

Voss chuckled in irony at that blood not just being Elf in origin.

His shoulder had a similar protrusion in the center, and he knew from the spikes of pain from his center torso's back, that it did so as well.

He turned, slowly, to view his last opponent.

He grimaced at just how TOUGH this last Thalmor looked.

The intricately carved Elven metal breastplate resembled the vine and plant-like architecture that was commonality for their armor, and twin large glass shoulder plates curved over it.

A Elven Justiciar hood curled over a thin, golden helmet that resembled the face of a metal Spriggan, and his arms were encased in Elven gauntlets layered over with belted strips of glass.

Slats of glass hung over a Elven lower-robe that enwrapped the Elven plate about his hips and thighs, and a cape, colored exact to the rest of the silken material on him, flapped behind him from beneath connections inside the magnificent suit of armor.

Dual Elven battleaxes that held glass blades were clasped in his gauntlets, and he gestured to Voss with the right one pointed forwards.

Discerned to his back was the Elven bow he had used to pump the majority of the arrows currently on him into his body.

Voss nodded to him weakly, and brandished the hammer he held.

Whether by impatience, or cockiness, the Thalmor Ranger made the first move.

Voss used the girth of the hammer's midsection to interrupt both of the axe blades, and jerked the Ebony handle and head down respectively in both directions to block the subsequent side strikes of the Elf.

A daring attempt of a swing interrupted the following array of dazzlingly fast parries and attacks they mounted thereafter, and Voss earned a satisfying rip of Elven metal as he landed a successful hit.

The Ranger made no noise, curse, or grunt to confirm the small amount of blood that leaked from the metal gash by his hip, and clashed the axes faster against the Dragonborn's masterful blocks.

Voss sent the butt of his weapon forwards, and dented the Ranger's breastplate, causing him to stumble backwards.

With a taking of the opportunity, Voss plunged the hammer downwards.

"-End of the line, scruffy!" He barked.

Maybe another smart-aleck mockery would have sounded from him, had the next sequence not occurred...

The Ebony weapon was swatted aside by both axes to the right, and they returned, with vigor, to the left.

Voss felt breath leave him when their heads impacted to his side, and dug into the Ebony armor, and just barely into his skin beneath.

He reeled, and jabbed his boot out, sending the Thalmor tumbling back to the street.

Now, this wasn't good...

AT ALL.

This freaking Elf was a maniac, and the dead silence he portrayed through it all only made the Dragonborn more intimidated.

Voss clenched about his wounds, and ran at the downed Thalmor, realizing, if he didn't kill him soon, then he would be having to worry about instant death more than some flesh-tears.

The hammer descended again, and it was right on mark...

"Give me a FRIGGING BREAK-!"

Voss was cut from his scream at the Elf-absent pavement, when a Elven Dagger dug into his hip.

He grunted, and fell to the opposite knee, leaning on the hammer for support, as the Ranger readied another ballistic knife attack.

"-That's it... I'm DONE." Voss grumbled.

As soon as the Ranger drew his hand back, he practically let his eyes bulge out of his head upon the first word before the two others, and by that point, all that he could hear was the whizzing of air.

"FUS RO DAH!"

The Ranger was hurled from the street like a ragdoll, and flew higher than Voss had really anticipated.

The Elf flipped and flopped, until he literally vanished over the side of the nearest wall surrounding Whiterun.

With an annoyed groan, Voss slouched back to the street, and was practically wishing the same morons of the city's buildings weren't completely oblivious to the fight outside their homes, and would actually KNOW to come help him.

He hadn't expected a fight, thus, that meant no healing potions were brought.

"-Well..." He coughed between slow crawls back to the Breezehome.

"-Poop."

-0-0-0-0-0-

The inside of the house was utterly quiet, and she completely disregarded it.

The mental battle within her mind was enough to quell the awkward silence.

Alduin had long taken to eyeing the floor while a trace tear escaped her every so often. She buried her chin in her claws, and flexed her wings out of habit.

Why could she not just accept what she REALLY wanted?

Why couldn't Voss do that same?

Why couldn't she atone for the horrible things she had done in her past?

And why the hell was the door cracked open?

She raised a brow, and snapped up to stare at the slowly opening entry to Voss' house, and she quietly stepped down from the chair when she heard quiet panting.

Fear was soon replaced with hysteria when the door flew open, and the crawling form of none-other than the oaf she admired stumbled into the foyer, bloodied armor breached by arrows, and twin gashes on his ribcage, blood mixed with the rainwater sopping off of him.

"V-VOSS?!" She cried, sprinting over to the downed Nord, and placing her claws on his sides to help him inside.

"-O-Oh, hey A-Al'..." He snickered wetly. "-Lovely weather huh?"

"WHAT IN SOVNGARDE'S NAME HAPPENED?!"

"Oh y-you k-know... Thalmor s-seem to be EVERYWHERE n-nowadays..."

Alduin had never performed medical in her life, but, she figured, for a first-timer at the whole doctoring thing, she did pretty damn good.

Because by the time four healing elixirs, two potions, and a bottle of water had been emptied by Voss's beside, the man was fast asleep without a mark on him.

However, his armor was another story.

Alduin put the damaged plate back in the chest he kept things, and hurried back over to the chair at his bedside to dote on him once more.

Voss muttered in his sleep about something she couldn't really comprehend, but she ignored it, and laid her snout atop his slowly rising and falling chest.

She sighed on him, and the last thing she heard amid her tangled thoughts and confusion before sleep, was Voss' final, dream-induced words.

"-H-hi... Voss here for... For an astounding new product... Called..." He spoke between light snores.

"-Called... Ka-boom..."

Alduin didn't really know what that was, and she didn't care. All that mattered, was that she stayed by Voss' side the rest of the evening.

And hopefully, for a long time afterwards.

-0-0-0-0-0-


End file.
